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Ewing Galloway 



The Taj Mahal, Agra 



This is not a tomb of marble, — never, never ! 

My heart cries out it is a dome of heavenly flowers. 

Those flowers that blossom on the trees of Paradise 

Have shed their radiant beauty to enshrine Mumtaz. 
— From a Bengali poem hij Satish Chandra Ray, 
Translated hy W. W. Pearson and 0. F. Andrews. 



India on the March 



By Alden H. Clark 



MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT 

OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 

NEW YORK 



3 






Copyright, 1922, by 

Missionary Education Movement op the 
United States and Canada 



PRINTED IK THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



aCl.AB77706 



«9 



TO THE THREE CHILDREN 

WHO HAVE SHARED IN THE EXPERIENCES 

AND HELPED IN THE WRITING OF THIS BOOK 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEE 

I. The Wonderland 

II. The Meeting Ground of East and West 

III. A Village Wrestler 

IV. Out of the Mire . 
V. Born to be Eobbers 

VI. Scouting in India . 

VII. Those Poor Missionaries 

VIII. Christians Who Count 



PAGE 
1 

25 

51 

75 

93 

115 

135 

155 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING PAGE 



The Taj Mahai . . Frontispiece 

Mission college students 36 

A Maratha trooper . . . . . . 68 

Training in agriculture 84 

A Criminal Tribes Settlement elementary school 100 

Rev. J. R. Chitambar 116 

Dr. Anna S. Kugler 148 

Rambhau's "adopted child" 164 



NOTE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF 
INDIAN WORDS 

' As a general rule it may be said that in the Indian 
languages the vowels are pronounced in the Italian 
manner rather than the English : i. e., like the vowels in 
do, re, mi, fa of the musical scale. There is a short a, 
which is often found at the close of Indian words and 
sometimes elsewhere. It is pronounced like the a in 
aboard. Indian languages have no flat a as in at. 
The u is pronounced like the ou in soup. Spellings 
have been used which give as nearly as possible the 
English equivalents of consonants. Many Indian words 
have an aspirated letter which appears as hh, dh, th, etc. 
This is given an explosive pronunciation like the hh in 
ahhor. In the case of important Indian words in the 
text in which there are exceptions to these rules, a foot- 
note shows the approximate pronunciation. Strong 
accent upon one or more syllables of a word is not so 
common in the Indian languages as in English. Each 
syllable is given very nearly the same weight in speak- 
ing the word. For common place names, a pronouncing 
gazetteer should be consulted. 



PREFACE 

As a higli scliool boy I heard a vivid account of the 
needs of mission lands. It appealed to me so strongly 
that I decided to go out as a missionary and began to 
try to fit my very lively and not over-pious self for 
the great life-work which I had dared to choose. Later, 
my courses in college were planned with this in mind. 
For a time the original purpose grew weak, but a fresh 
study of the facts with a college chum brought it back, 
stronger than ever. 

Real missionary life and work in India proved far 
more interesting and more significant than I had antici- 
pated. This little book is an expression of my enjoy- 
ment of the privilege of being a missionary. It is an 
attempt to pass on to others something of the attraction 
and appeal which India has for me. If it leads one 
strong, earnest American to answer the missionary call, 
I shall be well repaid for writing it. 

Perhaps I should call attention to the fact that in 
two chapters, the third and the fifth, I have used the 
story form as that seems the most effective way of pre- 
senting the situation. ^^Appaji" and "Tevan" are not 
actual persons, but they represent the experiences of 
many from India's middle classes and criminal tribes. 

The writing of this book has been made pleasant by 
the ready and able cooperation of Mr. Franklin D. 
Cogswell of the Missionary Education Movement. I 
owe a great debt also to Miss Mabel E. Emerson and 
Miss Ruth I. Seabury, both experts in missionary edu- 
cation, who have given unstinted advice and help at 

ix 



X PREFACE 

every stage of the work. I shall not attempt to name 
here the books which I have used, neither can I men- 
tion the many letters and other private sources which 
have been placed at my disposal. We are fortunate in 
having many interesting recent books about India, yet 
no publication on modern India can now be up to date. 
Before the print is dry on its pages, some of its state- 
ments will need to be modified. So quickly are events 
marching in fast-changing India ! 

National feelings and prejudices are running high 
in the Orient. It is no easy task to which India calls 
us; but it is a great task — the greatest in the world. 
We are aiming at nothing less than to make Christian 
brotherhood the dominating principle in the surging 
life of one of the world's greatest peoples. The heart 
of India responds with wonderful completeness to the 
appeal of Christ when His appeal really reaches her 
heart. JSTo other land has a greater contribution to make 
to the world than Christian India. And to-day India 
is choosing her future path. Shall it be one of turmoil 
and chaos, or shall it be one of development and world- 
wide helpfulness ? The next thirty years will largely 
give the answer to this question. ISTever before did 
India so clearly need the spirit of Christ, l^ever before 
was her missionary appeal to America so great. May 
we rise to our high privelege by responding to this 
appeal ! 

Aldeist H. Clark 

Boston, 1922. 



INDIA ON THE MARCH 



*If you've ^eard the East a-callin', why, you won't 'eed 
nothin* else." 

No! you won't 'eed nothin' else 
But them spicy garlic smells 
An' the sunshine an' the palm trees 
An' the tinkly temple bells! 

— Rudywrd Kipling 



I 

The Wonderland 

"This is India, the land of dreams and of romance, 
of fabulous wealth, of fabulous poverty, of splendor 
and of rags, of palaces and hovels, of tigers and ele- 
phants. Cradle of the human race, birthplace of human 
speech; mother of religion; grandmother of history; 
great-grandmother of tradition. The land of a hundred 
nations and of a hundred tongues; of a thousand reli- 
gions and of three million gods, and she worships them 
all. All other countries in religion are paupers ; India 
is the only millionaire. The one sole land under the 
sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for 
all men; rich and poor, bond and free; alien prince 
and alien peasant; all men want to see India, and hav- 
ing seen it once even by a glimpse, would not give up 
that glimpse for all the rest of the shows of the earth 
combined." 

So says Mark Twain in Following the Equator.^ 
I invite you to come with me and see for yourselves 
this wonderland of India. Who could refuse a chance 
to do anything so fascinating? There is always room 
for several more in our bungalows, or on the verandas, 
and we shall be delighted to see you and show you 
the real India — and learn from you the latest home 
styles and slang. Heat and hardship? Oh, yes, I 
suppose so. Have you ever heard of anything that 

1 Vol. 2, Chap. II. Quoted by permission of Estate of Samuel 
L. Clemens, The Mark Twain Company, and Harper & Brothers. 

1 



2 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

was really wortli doing where there wasn't a certain 
amount of heat and hardship to be endured ? 

The best time for the trip is during the "cold season," 
say, in December or January. Then, if "the rains" have 
not failed, the river valleys and great upland fields 
will be covered with waving grain — millet and sor- 
ghum, wheat and rice and sugar-cane. Then, at this 
time, too, her climate is ideally cool. Yes, cool ! Per- 
haps when we go to some northern hill station we shall 
have a snow-storm — and a snowball fight. Even down 
on the plains you may some day find a little ice on 
the water in the early morning. So bring a fairly warm 
coat along with you. 

I advise you to take passage from Marseilles to Bom- 
bay in one of the boats of the staid old Peninsu- 
lar and Oriental Company. Second-class will be all 
right and is really far less stiff and formal than first 
class. You will find plenty of English captains and 
majors and government officials "going second" with 
you on their way back to their jobs. There will be a 
foretaste of what is to come, as these people tell you 
some of their tiger stories and as you talk to your 
very courteous Indian fellow-passengers or when the 
barefooted Indian table steward, imposing in his great 
turban and white robe, brings you, with silent steps, an 
Indian curry. 

As you slowly steam into Bombay's mighty harbor, 
you will take in the tropical beauties of islet and shore 
and the imposing array of mountains that lie back of 
the long, narrow island. Yet I think that you will 
look with keenest interest at the tall buildings and 
smoking factory chimneys of this great modern city. 



THE WONDERLAND 



We &hall be awaiting jou, but shall not expect to receive 
much attention when you first come ashore. You have 
seen plenty like us before, while all around you on the 
great wharf, some shouting, some laughing, some moving 
with stately tread^ are such folk as you have never seen. 
The show that has the center of the stage at first is 
the landing of a native prince who was a fellow-passen- 
ger of yours. He is a Maharajah/ or "great king," 
and holds personal sway in true Oriental style over a 
principality as big as JSTew England. Soon a salute of 
twenty-two guns in his honor will boom out from the 
fort. He is the first to step down the gang-plank and 
is greeted by a group of European officials, some in ordi- 
nary civilian costume, but one, at least— a police officer 
— in pure white, standing stiff and straight. It looks 
as if he himself must have been starched and ironed 
right in the suit he wears. But it is the Maharajah's 
retainers, drawn up to receive him, who attract most of 
your attention. With their strange curved swords and 
their gorgeous gold-fringed turbans, they are like a pic- 
ture out of the Arabian Nights. 

However, even the picturesque costumes and ancient 
accoutrements of the Maharajah's men cannot hold your 
eye long in that crowd. A group of men and women 
waving to a passenger who is about to come ashore 
attract your attention next. Their complexion is light 
and their features are regular. Some of the men have 
on long black coats and queer stiff hats like stovepipes 
which have been chopped off on a slant. The women 
wear beautiful embroidered silk saris ^ or flowing dra- 
peries and do not seem at all troubled, as most India 

2 Every "a" long. s Pronounce "is" like "ees." 



4 H^DIA ON THE MARCH 

women would be, by being seen in the jostling crowd. 
They are Parsis — Persian fire-worsbippers whose an- 
cestors came to India centuries ago. The men are now 
for the most part successful merchants of Bombay and 
other Indian cities. They seem three-quarters Euro- 
pean, yet they are very much at home in India. A 
fellow-passenger has told you that this particular Parsi 
is a multimillionaire, a member of the famous Tata 
family that owns the greatest steel works in India be- 
sides great cotton mills and many other enterprises. 

Look at these two rough, muscular fellows with dark 
faces who are waiting to carry the heavy boxes which 
will soon be raised from the ship's hold. See how they 
are pushing and hitting and shouting and laughing at 
each other like a pair of great overgrown boys. 

That man with the long white robe and red beard? 
He is a Mohammedan who has done what is the ambi- 
tion of every devout Mohammedan to do. He has made 
the long pilgrimage to Mecca and proudly wears his 
beard stained red as a badge of his accomplishment. 

But we must fairly carry you away by force. We 
have arranged with the efficient and willing agents of 
Thomas Cook to bring up your trunks and have hired 
for ourselves garis, or open victorias. In time we start 
out for the mission compound in the heart of the In- 
dian city where ten o'clock ^^Dreakfast" awaits us. The 
streets are full ; other victorias with shouting drivers 
and poor, thin horses, queer, lurching, two-wheeled bul- 
lock carts, heaped high, automobiles, — ^we almost feel 
at home when we see how many of them are flivvers, 
• — tram cars, and a stream of barefooted brown people. 

At fi.rst we go through wide streets and between many- 



THE WOi^DERLAIsD 



storied buildings "wliicli are almost European in appear- 
ance. You exclaim with surprise when we come out 
into a great open space and see on our right the beauti- 
ful Victoria Terminus, the principal railroad station of 
Bombay, and one of the largest in the world. Soon, 
however, we plunge into narrow streets lined with queer 
little shops piled high with interesting things. The 
crowds are so dense that we have to drive very slowly , 
to avoid running over someone. How striking the 
people are with their brilliantly colored costumes and 
their strange speech! Doubtless before we reach the 
mission compound we shall have passed people who are 
talking every one of India's twelve great languages as 
well as many others both foreign and Indian. 

We are now in the heart of the Indian city in one 
of the most densely peopled areas in the world, and it 
doesn't seem possible that we have been only a short time 
before driving down a wide thoroughfare between great 
Western buildings. Yet everywhere we see automo- 
biles waiting in front of native shops, we hear grapho- 
phones playing, and presently we pass a moving picture 
palace. We are having a taste of the strange mingling 
of West and East which is one of the fascinations and. 
problems of modern India. 

At last we turn in at a gateway and find ourseIves^> 
in a most attractive compound. Right before us rises^ 
a beautiful church building, and to our left is an In-diam 
bungalow with ample verandas and many doors and?, 
windows. In the entrance stands a little group of our 
fellow-countrymen who have gathered to give jou the 
warmest sort of welcome. They have arranged that 
we shall have a breakfast to celebrate your coming, and 



% INDIA ON THE MARCH 

■soon we are seated around a long, improvised table 
-in the airy dining-room, all laughing and talking to- 
;gether. 

After your heavy ocean fare, you will enjoy the meal. 
It is quite like an American breakfast, with the addi- 
tion of Bombay plantains, or sweet, juicy bananas, and 
loose-skinned oranges, picked the day before. There 
will be cereal and eggs and doughnuts — the pride of 
the cook — and other good things. The silent-footed 
table-boy seems to know what you want as soon as you 
do yourself and passes your plate for a second helping. 

After breakfast we shall have a council of war. This 
trip of ours isn't to be of the ordinary tourist kind, 
w^ith a hop, skip, and a jump between "the sights." 
We've invited you because we want you to know the 
people of India and to respect and like them, as we are 
sure you will if you only know them. We are going 
to take you right out for a real visit with the village 
people of India. We are also going to introduce you to 
a few of India's political leaders and British adminis- 
trators and give you an opportunity to know some of 
our fellow-missionaries and Indian Christians. But 
you really must have a chance for at least a glimpse of 
the wonderful show places of India — no trip in India 
would be complete without that — and we have only a 
few short weeks for everything! Somehow, we must 
I)egin by taking a lightning trip all over India. Then 
we'll be ready to si)end the rest of our time in making 
friends with the people. 

Would you like to try a truly Indian plan ? In my 
(Own city of Ahmednagar there lives a Hindu holy man 
who, by his long meditation and his austerities, has 



THE WOI^DERLAND 7 

gained miraculous power, at least that is wliat people 
think. He was seen in Ahmednagar on a certain day, 
and on that same day friends say that they met him in 
the holy city of Benares, one thousand miles away. It is 
their belief that his mind had gained such complete 
control over his body that all he had to do was to repeat 
the proper mantraf' or sacred verse of magic power, to 
think himself in Benares and there he was. Why 
shouldn't we use this method of locomotion since we too 
are in this mystic land of India ? While I repeat the 
mantra of the Ahmednagar holy man, think with all 
your might, ^^Khyber Pass." 

We find ourselves twelve hundred miles north of 
Bombay and six thousand feet above sea level. Below 
us is a narrow cliff-lined pass which is the only way 
by which any large company can go through the mighty 
Himalayan barrier which, for eighteen hundred miles,,. 
guards India on the north. All about us is a wild coun- 
try of piled up mountaips, but in front and far below 
we can barely see from our perch the great green plaint 
of i^orth India. 

It was through this pass that our distant Aryan 
cousins entered India over three thousand years ago., 
Yes, the people of India are really distant relatives of 
ours. They left the high tableland of Central Asia 
and journeyed south to India about the same time that 
other near-by Aryan tribes began their journey toward 
Europe, there to become the ancestors of many of the 
European peoples. Even today there are several old 
Aryai^ words used in India which are nearly the 
4 Mun-tra. 



8 INDIA OIT THE MAECH 

same in sound and meaning as words which we use in 
English. 

As jou stand above this wild defile, can you not pic- 
ture those early invaders, keen of eye, strong of body, 
fearless and free of bearing, with their bows on their 
backs, driving their herds before them through the Pass ? 
They are looking for better homes, just as the Vir- 
ginians of colonial days were when they went through 
the mountain passes of the Appalachians on their way 
to the blue grass country of Kentucky. When some ven- 
turesome Aryan boy climbed our hill and for the first 
time looked down on the rich land of rivers and mead- 
ows and forests that was before him, can you not im- 
agine his shout of triumph as he dashed down to tell 
the news to those in the pass ? 

These bold Aryan invaders easily drove before them 
the dark-skinned people whom they found in their 
path, and soon their civilization became the dominating 
^civilization of India. Long afterwards successive waves 
of Mohammedan invaders came surging through this 
same great Pass and became masters of the Indian 
plain. 'Now it is securely guarded by the last invaders 
of India who came, not over the mountains, but by the 
sea. "We can see about us some signs of the vigilance 
with which the "Khyber Rifles," who are Indian troops 
under British officers, are now watching over this pass- 
age way to Central Asia. For still today, as in the 
^ime of the Aryans, the fierce people to the north cast 
longing eyes on the rich plains of India. If the strong 
liand of British rule were removed, it would not be 
long before armies of invaders were again marching 
through the Khyber Pass. 



THE WONDEELAND S 

But "we must not linger here too long. Shut your 
eyes and, while I again repeat our magic mantra, think 
"Darjeeling." 

We have once more leaped over nearly twelve hun- 
dred miles, this time to the southeast, right along the" 
mighty mountain harrier of the Himalayas. As we 
open our eyes, we shall draw in our breath in absolute 
wonder. After a time, a quiet exclamation of awe may 
come from the lips of some of us. We are on Tiger 
Hill on a clear day, and we are looking at one of the 
very grandest sights in the world. Have you ever been 
in the Canadian Kockies or the Alps or in any place 
where you have seen great snow-clad mountains? If 
you have, you can dimly picture to yourself the won- 
der of this scene. To the left, one hundred and twenty 
miles away, we can clearly see Mt. Everest, the highest 
mountain in the world, while right before us rises its 
mighty twin, itself 28,156 feet high, Kinchenjanga. 
The guide-book says that it is forty-five miles away, but 
as it rises before us in the clear air, we cannot be- 
lieve that it is more than ^Ye miles distant. "The eye 
looks over the lofty hills and across a vast chasm to the 
line of perpetual snow, about 17,000 feet high, on the 
side of the stupendous Kinchenjanga. Above that rises 
a glittering white wall, and then it seems as if the sky 
were rent, and the view is closed by enormous masses 
of bare rock." The longer you look at these mighty 
mountains, the more will their grandeur and their won- 
der impress you, and as we turn away, perhaps you 
will feel like saying with the great poet when he 
thought of another of nature's wonders, "What is man, 
that thou art mindful of him ?" 



10 IITDIA ON THE MAKCH 

But let US be off again on our mystic journey. This 
time it is a short trip — only three hundred and fifty 
miles southwest. We have come to the very heart of 
the Ganges plain, with its many compact little gray vil- 
lages and with ancient cities here and there on the 
river-bank. No "jungle" here, only fiat unfenced fields 
extending from the Bay of Bengal on the east way up 
the Ganges to the place where it pours out of the Hima- 
layas and thence to the southwest, down the Indus to 
the Indian Ocean, a great, fiat, curving belt, eighteen 
hundred miles long. One hundred and seventy-five mil- 
lion people live on this great plain, many more than 
there are in the United States and Canada, with Mexico 
and Central America thrown in. It is the countless 
little streams and the mighty rivers pouring down from 
the Himalayan snows which bring life to this great 
plain. "No wonder the people worship "Mother Ganga" 
and think of the Himalayas as the home of the gods. 

You will be surprised to see that the place in which 
we find ourselves is nothing but an ancient ruin. It is 
Sarnath, four miles from Benares, and the reason we 
are here is that it is one of the famous places where 
India's greatest religious teacher, Gautama Buddha, 
:first proclaimed his message. In front of us is the de- 
scendant of the very Bo tree under which he sat as he 
taught. 

Gautama was a young Indian prince of Aryan blood, 
I)rought up in luxury. The accounts speak of his great 
skill and strength. Indeed, we are told that he won 
his beautiful wife, Maya, by his prowess in archery 
and in other sports. But he was turned from his care- 
less life by seeing sights of great suffering in his father's 



THE WONDERLAIS^D 11 

city. He could no longer bear to go on in his selfish 
enjoyment while others were in such suffering, and came 
to feel that he himself must find the key to life's hard 
problem. So on the very night when his first child 
was born, he left home and friends and went off into 
the forest to think through the mysteries of life and 
death and to try to find some way to bring hope to 
suffering people. For years he lived in the forest, some-^ 
times fasting until he was little more than a skeleton 
and enduring all sorts of austerities, but in all this he 
found no message of hope for the world. At last, when 
he was in despair, light seemed to come to him. All at 
once he felt that he had found the true secret of life,, 
and he became "Buddha" — the Enlightened. 

The Aryans of Gautama's day had lost much of their 
former spontaneous joy of life. There was constant 
quarreling between the tribes and much suffering ex- 
isted among them. They were still, as they had always 
been, deeply religious. But the Brahmans, who were 
the priests and religious teachers, had squeezed most 
of the happiness out of their religion and had left it a 
dry routine of elaborate ceremonies, just as the Jewish 
Pharisees and priests had done in the time of Jesus. 
In Old Testament times the prophets denounced all the 
elaborate sacrifices and ceremonies and told the Chil- 
dren of Israel that what God wanted was the sacrifice 
of clean lives. Gautama was a great prophet who called 
the people from a religion of external forms to one of 
real life. He taught them that priestly ceremonies 
would not meet their need. What they must do was to 
give up their passions and selfish ambitions and by right 
thinking and right action free themselves from all de~ 



12 INDIA 0]S" THE MARCH 

sire of every sort. By getting rid of all desire, they 
would conquer sorrow and suffering. In this way, 
Gautama proclaimed, they would finally free themselves 
from the great "wheel of life." 

His teaching contained no vital message ahout God, 
and the goal to which he invited his hearers was "]^ir- 
vana" — the absence of conscious life. But he himself 
was so attractive a man, he led such a beautiful life, and 
preached with such power that many followed his "gos- 
pel." Despite its deficiencies, the religion of Gautama 
was far better than the dry ritual of the priests. 

Here among the ruins of Sarnath you may see a 
column covered with the remarkable chiseled edicts of 
Gautama's most powerful follower, the great Asoka, 
Emperor of a large part of India. It was in remorse 
at the terrible bloodshed and suffering of a great victory 
he had just won that Asoka was converted to Buddhism. 
He was equally great as an emperor and as a disciple 
and stands out as one of the most attractive rulers of 
history. In many ways he was like our o^vn Alfred the 
Great, but his empire was many times greater than 
that of Alfred. In Asoka's day Buddhism became a 
mighty missionary religion, sending its messengers to 
Tibet, Burma, and China whence they later went to 
Japan. In this way Gautama Buddha, the simple re- 
ligious teacher, became the greatest figure in Asia, and 
at the present time five hundred million people are 
partially or wholly his followers. 

Yet how unattractive his message seems to us today. 
Here were his last words, spoken when he was over 
eighty years old to a group of his closest disciples: 
"Behold now, brethren, this is my exhortation to you. 



THE WONDEELAND 13 

Decay is inherent in all things. Work out, therefore, 
your emancipation with diligence." 

If only this great-hearted teacher could have known 
Christ and learned from Him, he would not have talked 
so much of "decay" and "freedom from desire," hut he 
would have called people to the joy of service to God 
and men. Really it is no wonder that in the end India 
turned from Buddha's cheerless teaching hack to Hin- 
duism. There, at least, was a god — indeed myriads of 
gods to be worshipped. 

Only four miles from these quiet ruins is the proof 
of Buddha's failure to meet the deepest needs of men's 
hearts. There lies the great city of Benares which has 
been India's religious capital — its Mecca — since his- 
tory began. Benares is filled with temples and shrines 
and idols. Here we find ourselves in a swirl of men 
and women bent on worship. Through the dark, nar- 
row, crooked, crowded streets and many temples, with 
their slimy tanks of holy water, a million pilgrims pass 
every year. Here are holy men lying on beds of spikes, 
and others with rigid upraised arms which have been 
kept so long in this position that they have lost all power 
of movement. Hindu widows with shaved heads and 
hopeless faces hurry by in the crowd. Read what 
Macaulay says about Benares, and I am sure you will 
feel that it applies to what you are seeing today. "The 
traveller could scarcely make his way through the press 
of holy mendicants and not less holy bulls. The broad 
and stately flights of steps which descended from these 
swarming haunts to the bathing-places along the Ganges 
were worn every day by the footsteps of an innumerable 



14 IISTDIA OIT THE MARCH 

multitude of worshippers. The schools and temples 
drew crowds of pious Hindus from every province where 
the Brahmanical faith was known. Hundreds of de- 
votees came hither every month to die, for it was be- 
lieved that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man 
who should pass from the sacred city into the sacred 
river." On the river-hank are the burning funeral 
pyres, the ashes of which will soon be thrown to "Mother 
Ganges." 

Let us walk along beside this band of villagers 
who are coming with their banners and their gourds 
to be filled with Ganges water, and talk with them. 
Where did they come from? "From a village near 
Bijawar, eight days' journey away." Had they walked 
all the way ? "Yes." Why did they come ? "To bathe 
in Mother Ganges and to have a sight of God in 
the temple. What else?" We look over the group 
with a new interest and respect. Ignorant they clearly 
are, but they have revealed in this simple answer a 
hunger to feel themselves near to God which was great 
enough to induce them to endure the hardships of that 
long tramp and to spend their meager savings for the 
journey. How many in Christian America would give 
such proof that their religion meant something to them ? 
Doubtless other motives entered in. This pilgrimage is 
a way of finding change from the monotony of village 
life. It gives something of the excitement of a country 
fair. Yet underneath all else is a consciousness of the 
need for God — which is India's great gift to our busy 
Western world. 

When our eyes are tired with the bewildering sights 
of Benares, we will come aside out of the surging 



THE WONDERIAKD 15 

crowd and again try the power of our spell, "Agra'' is 
our next goal. 

I almost doubt the potency of any psychic power 
to prevent our turning a little further north to go to 
imperial Delhi. Delhi is the agelong political center 
of India, with ruins of many a famous city of bygone 
days surrounding it and with the wonderful buildings 
of the Mohammedan Mogul emperors and of the rising 
new British capital making it one of the show cities 
of the world. Yet Agra is our choice because here we 
are in closer touch than at Delhi with Akbar, greatest 
of the great Moguls, and one of the great rulers of 
history, and here is the Taj Mahal, which people call 
the most beautiful building in the world. 

The story of Akbar's boyhood is a wild tale of ad- 
venture. He was born in the camp of Humayun, his 
father, who was fleeing from India for his life after a 
complete defeat. Akbar was a very little lad when he 
came marching back into India with the once more vic- 
torious Humayun. When he was only thirteen, the 
news of his father's death found him off on an expedi- 
tion with the army. In a few weeks he had been pro- 
claimed emperor and had accompanied his army in a 
victorious campaign against his most dangerous rival. 
That was a little before Queen Elizabeth began her 
long reign in England, and Akbar's reign outlasted even 
hers. 

Eight before you is the wall of the great Agra fort 
over the battlements of which young Akbar, single 
handed, flung the man who had just murdered his prime 
minister. Until that time he had been more interested 
in sport than in his empire. Indeed he was called the 



16 IISTDIA ON THE MARCH 

best polo player of his time. But from that day on for 
forty-three years he reigned with such wisdom and 
ability that much of his work remains as the basis of 
the Indian Empire of today. He began, a child-ruler 
over a very uncertain kingdom. When he died, he was 
perhaps the greatest and richest ruler in the world, with 
most of the vast area of India as well as Afghanistan 
and- Baluchistan owning his sway. 

He was generous to beaten enemies and tolerant to 
followers of other faiths. He was nominally a Moham- 
medan, yet he was interested in every religion. There 
is a tradition that one of his wives was a Christian. 
In spite of the fact that he himself was not a very loyal 
Mohammedan, there can he no doubt that Akhar's great 
reign helped in the spread of the religion of the Arabian 
prophet. There are today over sixty-five million Mo- 
hammedans in India — ^by far the greatest numher to 
be found in any country in the world. 

If Akhar was the David of the Mogul Empire, Shah 
Jehan was its Solomon, and we are now to see the mas- 
terpiece of this great huilder. Whatever else we hurry 
over, we are going to take enough time to study the Taj 
Mahal. We shall see its glistening dome through the 
green trees of its garden, and then we shall take a 
hoat and see it from across the stately Jumna River, 
with the fine red sandstone buildings on either side set- 
ting it off, the whole reflected in the still waters of the 
river. We shall see it in the full hlaze of afternoon 
and again as sunset lights its graceful towers and, most 
heautiful of all, as the full moon softens its white 
marble into ivory and it rises before us a veritable crea- 
tion of fairyland. 



THE WONDEfiLAND l7 

Of course we shall go inside and look at the beauti- 
ful designs of precious stones inlaid in the marble and 
the wonderful trelliswork screens of white marble that 
surround the tombs. We shall feel "the chastened 
beauty of that central chamber" which "no words can 
express." Indeed, no words can express the impression 
of beauty made by the Taj. Such a building could 
have been built only as an expression of some great and 
beautiful ideal. And so it was. 

Shah Jehan, grandson of Akbar, spent twenty-two 
years and untold treasure in building the Taj, that it 
might be a tribute to his queen, Mamtaz-i-Mahal — "The 
chosen of the palace." He loved her with so great a 
love that when she died, his only consolation was in the 
creation of this wonderful tribute in marble. Later, 
when Shah Jehan was dethroned and imprisoned by 
his son, tradition says that he asked to be allowed to 
be confined in an apartment in the fort from which he 
could see the Taj Mahal. There he died, facing his 
matchless memorial to his beloved queen. 

In Agra we have seen resting under the trees herds 
of camels which are soon to start over the desert wastes 
of Rajputana to the west, and we long to follow them 
into that land of chivalry and romance. Indeed it 
seems almost impossible that, we should fly past the pic- 
turesque native states of Rajputana and over the won- 
derful old capitol and fort of Gwalior. If we could 
only stop in some of these places, we could be the guests 
of rajahs and, seated on royal elephants, we might visit 
wonderful ancient palaces — and modern ones as well. 
We could get a bit of the flavor of the life in these 
principalities which cover a third of India's territory. 



18 INDIA o:n the march 

and whicli still maintain much of the glamour and 
splendor of the ancient Oriental despots. 

But we must be inexorable with ourselves. Eeso- 
lutelj think "Satpura Mountains." 

What a contrast to the palaces and mosques of Agra ! 
We are in the wild region of mountain and jungle which 
separates the northern plain of India from the great up- 
land plateaus of the Deccan or South Country. The 
trees are not dense, and there is no tangled mass of vines 
and creepers such as you may have pictured in an Indian 
'^jungle" ; yet jungle it is. There are many open spaces, 
and in the middle of some of them you see impenetrable 
thickets of thorned cactus. We are on a narrow wind- 
ing path which is the only highway through this 
country. 

Suddenly, noiselessly, there appears before us a dark 
little man with a short bow in his hand. We exchange 
greetings. He is evidently excited. He jabbers away 
at me in very low tones and gestures toward a dense 
mass of cactus only a hundred yards away. Then he 
looks around and points to a jutting rock on the hill- 
side on the other side of the valley. This man is a 
member of the wild hunter tribe of Bhils who have eyes 
as keen as those of any American Indian. They live in 
these hills and make their living largely by hunting. A 
man-eating Bengal tiger has been dealing destruction to 
their jungle village and to others as well. He had be- 
come so bold that the night before, he pounced upon 
and carried off a child from the very street of the vil- 
lage, and they had traced him to this place. All the 
men of the village had come out with whatever weapons 



THE WONDEELAND 19 

they owned. They had vowed that, no matter if several 
of them were killed in doing it, they would put an end 
to the constant dread of their lives in which they all 
lived because of this tiger. He was gorged with his 
meal and at present lay asleep. They were about to 
attack him, and this Bhil, who was their leader, asked 
us to go to the position of safety on the hill. 

Quickly, and as quietly as possible, we follow our 
guide and, lying flat behind the rock, eagerly look 
toward the cactus. 'Now we see the Bhils approaching 
it on every side. Two have old shot-guns or muskets. 
Most of the men carry short bows of stiff bamboo and 
reed arrows with heavy iron heads. All have hatchets 
stuck into their waist-bands. We wait, breathless. The 
leader gives a signal. A gun shot rings out. Arrows 
fly. Then a great roar, and out from the cactus crashes 
the wounded tiger. He pauses a moment to locate his 
enemies. We hear another shot. More arrows fly. The 
tiger staggers, but makes a spring toward the nearest 
Bhil. Alert little hunter that he is, he springs aside 
and throws his hatchet with marvelous skill. It makes 
a deep gash in the great tawny beast's neck. The tiger 
tries to follow the hunter, but staggers and falls. At 
once the Bhils are upon him making doubly sure of their 
victory by blows from their hatchets. We rush down to 
join the group around the fallen monarch of the jungle. 
One lucky arrow has hit an eye. Another is in his neck. 
Several wounds in his side show how deadly was the 
aim of these wiry hill men. As the huge beast lies 
there nearly ten feet long, his great fangs showing 
through his open jaws, power in every line of body and 
leg, we marvel at the courage of these little hunters in 



20 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

attacking such a creature with their crude weapons* 
It is surprising and interesting, indeed, to find that 
in almost every part of such a thickly peopled land as 
India there should still be stretches of jungle country 
inhabited by wild or half -tamed peoples like the Bhils. 
As we go back to gather up the belongings we had 
hastily dropped in our excitement, we are brought up 
with a start, for a dark snake over five feet long is lazily 
crawling directly across our path. He sees us, pauses, 
coils himself, and raises his head. 'No mistaking that 
head with the beautiful markings on its spreading um- 
brella. He is a great cobra. As we retreat, he sees that 
his danger is past, and, uncoiling, quickly glides into 
the cactus beyond, for he is just a little bit more afraid 
of us than we are of him. You may see other cobras 
while you are in India, but they will probably be in the 
baskets of snake charmers and jugglers. All over India 
poisonous snakes are a lurking danger, and we are 
always glad to have a mongoose pay our hedges a visit ; 
but you may live in India for years and never see a 
single free cobra. I am almost safe in assuring you 
that you will see no more on this trip. 

After this experience you are all probably quite ready 
to put unusual intensity into the thought which is to 
carry us out of this wild country and on our journey. 
*^Tanjore" is the word this time, and we open our eyes 
to find ourselves once more amid the streaming crowds 
of a city street. We are a thousand miles south of Agra 
in a city which is a great center of South India culture. 
The people are different in dress and in appearance 
from those of the North. The language sounds differ- 
ent. The buildings are different. Somehow the whole 



THE WONDERLAI^D 21 

atmosphere is entirely changed. We see almost no 
bearded Mohammedans and few whose light complex- 
ions indicate Aryan blood. These people are Dravidians 
by race. They were driven south by the Aryan in- 
vaders, and here they founded over fifteen hundred 
years ago a civilization which has ever since been grow- 
ing richer in literature and art. 

I see that your eye is attracted by that curious great 
cannon which you see in a bastion of the fort. It is 
named Raja Gopala and is twenty-four and a half feet 
long with a bore of two and a half feet. You could 
easily crawl into it. In many places in India you will 
find big guns like this in the ancient forts. The old 
Indian Rajahs were very fond of them. Do you re- 
member that Kim was sitting on one in Lahore when 
he first met his Lama ? 

A massive tower covered with images of gods and 
demons rises two hundred feet above us and soon de- 
mands our attention. It is clearly a temple, yet we 
have seen no such mighty temple building even in holy 
Benares. As we walk into the enclosure another great 
tower appears and we find ourselves in the midst of a 
bewildering array of cloisters and chapels covering a 
very wide area, all part of the same temple. The guide 
tells us that part of this great temple dates from the 
fourth century A. D. — that is from the time of the Ro- 
man Empire. Other portions were built a little after 
the reign of William the Conqueror. The great towers 
which completed the temple were added at about the 
time of Columbus. Here and there in the enclosure we 
see sleek Brahman priests who are keenly watching to be 
sure that we do not go where we are not allowed and so 



22 IISTDIA 01^ THE MAECH 

desecrate the temple. But thej are even more eagerly 
watching the offerings of the worshippers. 

In spite of the fact that they are few in numher in 
South India, the Brahmans seem to dominate things 
here in an even more imperious way than they do in the 
!N'orth. As we ramble about the town, we cannot get 
away from that great temple. It overshadows the whole 
city. It is so in many cities of the South. Hinduism 
seems to be absolutely in control here. 

Yet in this very country Christianity has won greater 
victories than anywhere else in India. Right before 
us is one visible reason for this. It is the church of 
Christian Frederick Schwartz and was erected by him 
in 1777. He was one of India's greatest early mis- 
sionaries and was trusted by every class of people. At 
one time he acted as ambassador of the British to Hyder 
Ali of Mysore and made so great an impression on that 
fierce ruler that he invited him to stay in his country 
and preach Christianity. But Schwartz declined be- 
cause he felt that he was most needed in Tan j ore. The 
Rajah of Tanjore asked him to do many difficult public 
services, every one of which Schwartz performed with 
great ability. Finally, the Rajah made him guardian 
of Sarabojee, his son and heir. 

Tor a time this humble missionary, whose main in- 
terest was in his growing congregations of Christians, 
was the most important man in the government of a 
rich and populous native state. The young Rajah 
whose guardian he had been, loved him as a father, and 
when Schwartz died, erected to his memory the marble 
monument which we see in the church. He also com- 
posed the quaint inscription which we shall read : 



THE WONDEELATiTD 23 

Firm wast thou, Immble and wise, 
Honest, pure, free from disguise, 
Father of orphans, the widow's support. 
Comfort in sorrow of every sort. 
To the benighted, dispenser of light, 
Doing and pointing to that which is right. 
Blessing to princes, to people, to me; 
May I, my father, be worthy of thee! 
Wishest and prayest thy Sarabojee. 

Our week of sightseeing is over, and we must be get- 
ting back to Bombay for a Sunday of rest. We shall 
pass, swift as thought, over the high mountains of South 
India, over her great upland plateau, over the "Western 
Ghats'' which rise near India's western coast, and down 
again into the mission compound in Bombay, eight 
hundred miles away. 

As we sit back in our comfortable veranda chairs, we 
shall all be going over in imagination the many great 
sights which we have seen. There will also come pour- 
ing into the minds of each of us little bits of native life 
and color which perhaps we alone have noticed. We 
have seen something of the wonders of nature and art in 
India, something of her variety of life, something of 
the greatness of her past, something of her human in- 
terest. 

After a Sunday of worship with the progressive 
Indian church and of quiet rest in our bungalows, you 
will be eager to go on to find the answers to some of 
the questions about India that fairly bristle in your 
mind and to become better acquainted with her inter- 
esting people. 



' It may take years — ^it may take a century — ^to fit 
India for self-government, but it is a thing worth doing 
and a thing that may be done. It is a distinct and 
intelligible Indian policy for England to pursue — a way 
for both countries out of the embarrassments of their 
twisted destinies. Then set it before you. Believe in 
it, Hope for it. Work up to it in all your public acts 
and votes and conversations with your fellow-men. 
And ever remember that there is but one way by which 
it can be reached. . . . Till India is leavened with Chris- 
tianity, she will be unfit for freedom. When India is 
leavened with Christianity, she will be unfit for any 
form of slavery, however mild. England may then leave 
her . . . freely, frankly, gladly, proudly leave the stately 
daughter she has reared, to walk the future with a free 
imperial step. — Sir Herbert Edwardes, K.G.B., K.G.8.I,, 
Hero of the Indian Mutiny 



II 

The Meeting Ground of East and West 

We are on an athletic field in the beautiful inland 
city of Poona in western India. A crowd of excited 
boys and men is watching a game of aUa-patia — a pop- 
ular team game that is played, under different names, 
over most of India. This particular contest is between 
two of Poona's high school teams. The players are 
barefooted. They wear but little clothing, and their 
light brown bodies are lithe and graceful. By their 
color and general appearance we can easily see that 
almost all of them are Brahmans, the proud descendants 
of India's Aryan conquerors. Ten players are lined up 
at one end of the long, narrow field. The opposing 
team is scattered down the field, each player guarding a 
cross line. You can picture what the field is like by 
thinking of a shortened football gridiron squeezed to- 
gether until its side lines are six yards apart, a third 
line running down the center. 

The signal to start is given, and the attacking team 
rushes forward into the upper squares. One fine look- 
ing fellow slips through the first opponents and comes 
bounding down toward the lower end of the field, stop- 
ping short before an alert antagonist. 'Now watch the 
contest. Back and forth he runs, seeking an opening; 
but the guardian of the square is equally quick and 
bars the way. Suddenly, like a flash, the runner flings 
himself almost flat on the ground, but forward and out- 
ward so that only one foot remains inside the side line, 

thus keeping him technically within bounds. Again, 

25 



26 INDIA Oiq" THE MARCH 

like a flash, he rises, but he is beyond the guardian of 
that line and in the next square. You never saw a 
football runner in America put more fire into his play, 
and I doubt if you ever saw one who moved more 
quickly. Others follow. See how skilfully the team 
works together in getting its men forward, and with 
what fearlessness and abandon they throw themselves 
down- in passing their opponents. Gradually they work 
their way forward until the first player has reached the 
farther end of the field and, turning, has threaded his 
way back until he finally dodges across the starting 
line. ''Lon! ion/" they shout. "Goal! Goal!'' The 
boys jump and yell for all the world like American boys 
whose team has made a touchdown. 

These boys are the "lazy Brahmans" about whom you 
may have heard ! A few years ago most of them would 
have been spending the afternoon idly strolling about, 
telling stories, and singing songs; or they would have 
been lying on their beds or under a tree, committing to 
memory some text-book. But now they have caught the 
new spirit which is abroad in the land. They want to 
see their country playing a great part in the world. 
They realize that India must have men of strong bodies 
and fearless spirits, men able to play the game as a 
team and take failure with a smile. There is passionate 
patriotism in the way the high-caste boys in the schools 
of Poena and other places are getting ready to meet this 
need. More than school loyalty expresses itself in the 
way they are playing atia-patia. There is love of their 
Motherland. ''Bande Mataramr^ — "Hail to the 
Motherland!" — is their rallying cry. 

iBundey Materum. 



THE MEETIN-G GEOUITD OF EAST AKD WEST 27 

Back of this new patriotism which is changing these 
schoolboys from flabby, selfish bookworms into keen 
athletes lies Indians contact with the modern Western 
world — especially with sport-loving and liberty-loving 
Britain. You cannot understand India's modern schools 
and colleges, its great factory chimneys, and its passion- 
ate patriotism, flourishing right by the side of densest 
ignorance, wooden plows, and indifference to public 
affairs, unless you know something of the fascinating 
story of her contact with the Western nations. 

The Western world has always been nearer to the 
Eastern world than most persons imagine. Every 
American schoolboy and businessman uses something 
Indian many times a day. We do all our figuring with 
what we call "Arabic numerals," because they came to 
Europe through the Arabs. But they are really Indian 
numerals which were brought to Palestine by Arab 
traders before the time of the Crusades. The Crusaders 
introduced them into Europe. Of course, they have 
changed a little in the process of time and travel, but 
not very much, after all, as you shall see if you will 
come into one of our little elementary schools. It will 
take you about three minutes to learn how to follow 
everything which the boys write as they work out or- 
dinary examples in arithmetic. And remember that 
their ancestors were using these figures when our own 
were hunting with bows and arrows in the forests of 
Europe and counting on their fingers. 

India has ever held a fascination for Europe. In 
the old days great caravans transported her precious 
stones and her spices, her ivory and her beautiful cloth 



28 I»"DIA ON THE MARCH 

to Constantinople and other ports, and mercliants from 
Venice and Genoa spread them over Europe. ^^Calico" 
was named from the city of Calicut in India from 
which this kind of cloth first came. Fancy the Queen 
of England making the hit of the season at Court by 
appearing in a robe made from a rare Indian cloth 
which some English merchant had just brought from 
Venice, and which was really nothing more nor less 
than a calico dress. 

When the Turks conquered Syria and Asia Minor, 
they closed the caravan routes between India and 
Europe and tried to keep all the Indian trade to 
themselves; but western Europe refused to be cut off 
from the trade of India. The fine ladies were bound to 
have their Calicut dresses as well as their muslins and 
cloth of gold, their diamonds and pearls. It was the 
lure of India that led the navigators of Spain and 
Portugal to try to sail around Africa and that led 
Columbus to venture out on the untried western ocean. 
When he discovered land, he thought that he had 
reached India, and naturally he called the natives "In- 
dians." Europeans were sorely disappointed when it be- 
came known that they had only discovered America, 
when they had hoped to find India ! 

After many unsuccessful attempts the Portuguese 
finally found their way around Africa to India and 
established trading-stations there. It was the age of 
daring adventure. Sir Walter Paleigh was fitting out 
his first colonizing expedition for Virginia. At about 
the sam3 time a company of English traders secured a 
charter from good Queen Bess and sent ships on the 
six months' journey around Africa to start a modest 



THE MEETING GKOUND OF EAST AND WEST 29 

trading-station at Surat, the port of Akbar's Empire. 
So began two dangerous little English enterprises, each 
of which often seemed on the very verge of failure. By 
the sheer pluck of those sturdy pioneers, both ventures 
succeeded and have resulted in mighty empires. To 
the east is the great Indian Empire, still controlled by 
Britain, and to the west, the imperial lands of Canada 
and the United States, which owe their language and 
much of their civilization to England. 

It is a very interesting fact that the English did not 
at first wish to govern India or dream that they ever 
would do so. All they sought was a chance for peace- 
ful trade. In the qiiaint style of the day, Sir Thomas 
Roe, British ambassador to the Mogul court, wrote, in 
1612 : "A war and traffic is incompatible. . . . Let 
this be received as a rule. If you will profit, seek it 
in private trade." He pointed out that the Portuguese 
and Dutch lost the profits of their trade by getting 
mixed up with the government of the country and so 
having to maintain armies. Yet it was not twelve years 
before the British had to fight off the jealous Portu- 
guese at Surat. Then Shiva ji, the great Indian chief, 
swooped dovm from his mountain fortresses to raid this 
rich port. Later on the Dutch and the French attacked 
the English, who soon found that if they wanted to 
trade, they would have to be strong enough to defend 
themselves. So they built forts and organized littl^ 
armies consisting of a few Englishmen and many more 
Indian soldiers, or sepoys. 

Many bold adventurers and able leaders had a hand 
in the development of England^s connection with India. 
There were wars, and there was much hard work. First, 



30 Il^DIA ON THE MARCH 

the English won little pieces of territory, among them 
the wild island of Bombay, which was very much like 
the equally wild island of Manhattan on which 'New 
York City was soon to be built. Then they conquered, 
one by one, whole provinces as big and rich and popu- 
lous as European countries. It was a long process, but 
by 1857 it was almost finished, and the British East 
India Company found itself, with a handful of white 
men and many Indian assistants, governing a land as 
large and with as great a population as all Europe ex- 
cept Russia. 

Among the interesting men who laid the foundations 
of the Indian Empire was rough Job Charnock, who 
doggedly clung to the fever-infested mud flat which the 
iN^awab (ruler) of Bengal assigned to him as a trading- 
post. He watched most of his men sicken and die, but 
stayed on until the beginnings of the great city of Cal- 
cutta rose about him. There was Gerald Angier, early 
governor of Bombay, who had the vision to see "the city 
which by God's assistance is intended to be built," and 
who was "a chivalric and intrepid man who made it 
his daily study to advance the company's interest and 
the good and safety of the people under him." 

The most picturesque and typical figure of the early 
days of Britain's contact with India is that of Robert 
Clive. He was a tempestuous, uncontrolled boy. Once 
he shocked the sedate people of his quiet English village 
by climbing the steeple of the village church and sitting 
astride the eaves-spout. No school kept him long, and 
at eighteen his father packed him off to India as a 
clerk of the East India Company. Seven years later, 
with a tiny force of poorly trained troops, most of them 



THE MEETING GROUND OF EAST AND WEST 31 

Indian sepoys, he had, by his bravery and wonderful 
leadership, captured the important fortress of Arcot, 
withstood a siege, won a decisive victory, and turned the 
tide against the seemingly all-conquering French. The 
mighty French power in India never recovered from 
that defeat by an English boy commander who was 
trained to be a clerk, but who had the heart of a great 
general. When his father heard of the brilliant victory 
of Arcot, he said, "After all, the booby has something 
in him.'' 

At thirty Clive was made Governor of Madras. Soon 
afterward tidings came speeding from the north that 
Surajah Dowlah, the depraved and cruel Nawab of 
Bengal, had captured Calcutta and had thrown one 
hundred and forty-six European men, women, and chil- 
dren into the Black Hole where all but twenty-three of 
them perished in the night. The new Governor lost no 
time in preparing to march against the ISTawab, and soon 
found himself with a little army of two thousand In- 
dian and one thousand English soldiers with nine small 
cannon facing the E^awab's army of fifty thousand in- 
fantry and eighteen thousand cavalry with a contingent 
of French soldiers and with fifty great cannon drawn 
up at some distance beyond a small river. Should he 
cross the river against the enemy and so risk the 
annihilation of his force ? All the officers except one 
advised against taking such a risk, but when the coun- 
cil of war broke up, Clive reversed their decision and 
led his little army forward. ISText day the battle of 
Plassey was fought, the ISTawab's army was completely 
defeated, and the English became the real power in the 
great province of Bengal. The mighty British Empire 



32 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

in India practically dates from June 22, 1757, the day 
on which young Clive decided to cross the river and 
fight the ]^awab. 

What follows sounds like a story-book romance. The 
corrupt jN'awah fled, but was captured and killed. Clive 
installed a new and friendly ruler, who took him through 
the treasure chamber of the capital, with its great jars 
of jewels and gold and silver coins on either hand, and 
told him to take what he wanted as a present. In those 
days it was considered honorable for a general to take 
such spoils of war, and Clive actually accepted treasure 
worth more than a million dollars, while other officers 
and officials received large sums. Kupees, plate, and 
jewels were sent in boat-loads down the river to Cal- 
cutta. Two years later, for another service, the new 
!N^awab gave Clive as a little token of appreciation the 
revenue of the Calcutta district, or about $160,000 a 
year. 

The English did not yet understand what a poor 
country India really was. They knew of Akbar's splen- 
dor and of the vast treasures of Indian rulers ; they did 
not realize that these treasures were wrung from the 
poverty of India's peasants. Young Clive resigned 
from his position and returned to England where he was 
made a peer and lived as a '^Nahoh/' ISTaturally the 
other agents of the East India Company wanted to fol- 
low Clive's example. There was a general scramble 
after money which resulted in the oppression of the 
Indians. The Company saw that it must send out from 
England a Governor-General who would be strong 
enough to clean things up. 

Of all men they chose for the task this young prince 



THE MEETING GROUND OF EAST AND WEST 33 

of iN'abobs^ this man who had become a millionaire over 
night out of the spoils of India — Robert Clive. And 
they chose rightly. Clive was as brave and fearless in 
his fight against the corruption of his countrymen as 
he had been in battle and did much to "cleanse the 
Augean stables." In two short years of intense activity 
which broke his health, he made the Company's posi- 
tion in India far stronger than it had been. Macaulay 
says about this man who went to India a scapegrace 
boy to become a clerk in a struggling company and in 
a few years won an empire for England, "Our island, 
so fertile in heroes and statesmen, has scarcely ever 
produced a man more truly great either in arms or in 
council." 

At the time that Clive was winning his battles, the 
Mogul Empire was crumbling, and all India was in 
confusion. Little kingdoms were rising and fighting 
each other on every side. Great bands of robbers 
roamed the country. But gradually British rule ex- 
tended, bringing peace and order. Sometimes the 
earlier British rulers were harsh and intolerant and 
did India wrong; but often they were men of noble 
character and ability. On the whole, they brought 
peace and progress to a disturbed and suffering land. 

In many ways the outstanding man among all the 
earlier English rulers in India was Lord William Ben- 
tinck. He was a great lover of liberty. As a young 
man he helped Italy to win her freedom, and when he 
became Governor-General, in 1828, he did everything 
in his power to give Indians high place in their coun- 
try's life. He also fearlessly fought such Indian 



34: IN"DIA ON THE MAECH 

abuses as saU_, or the burning of widows on the funeral 
pyres of tbeir busbands, and the inhuman practice that 
existed in some parts of India of killing many of the 
girl babies. 

It was in Lord William Bentinck's day that there 
came the great controversy as to whether the Govern- 
ment should offer Indians an English education or 
whether it should favor teaching them only their own 
languages and culture. A strong party argued that the 
Government should encourage only Indian education. 
It would be dangerous for the British Government, they 
said, for Indians to receive Western education and learn 
too much about Western freedom. 

Perhaps the strongest and most enthusiastic advocate 
of English education was a young Scotch missionary, 
Alexander Duff. He believed that Indians were 
worthy of the very best that the West could give them, 
and, what was more, he was proving in his own remark- 
able school what English education would do for India. 
The famous Macaulay, who was then a member of 
the Supreme Council and to whom this question was 
referred, advised strongly in favor of English educa- 
tion. In his epoch-making Minute, with which Lord 
William Bentinck heartily agreed, he repudiated the 
idea of keeping India ignorant in order to keep it sub- 
missive. He clearly saw that through English educa- 
tion the day might come when India would outgrow 
British rule and demand European institutions of frc3- 
dom, and he said, ^Whenever it comes, it will be the 
proudest day in British history." In this high spirit 
the British Government definitely committed itself to 
promoting Indian progress. 



THE MEETING GROUI^D OF EAST AND WEST 35 

But probably the man who did more than any Briton 
could do to lead India out into tbe modern world was 
the Indian prophet of the new day, the Pajah Bam 
Mohan Boy, ^ ^through whose courageous efforts a golden 
bridge was first erected uniting the progressive, practical 
traditions of the West with the sublime idealism of the 
East." ^ Up to his time most leading Indians had 
clung to their own old ways and had opposed Western 
civilization. Bajah Bam Mohan Boy had the courage 
to attack the ancient evils of India, — idolatry and caste 
and sati. He secured for Duff the rooms in which he 
started his school, helped him and other missionaries 
in many ways, and cooperated with Lord William Ben- 
tinck in his fight against sati and in his other reforms. 
Bam Mohan Boy dared to tell his proud high-caste 
countrymen that they must learn from the West, and 
that they must learn from Christ. It was his conviction 
that underneath all reform must lie religion, and his 
greatest work was the founding of a liberal religious 
society, the Brahmo Samaj. He wrote, "I have found 
the doctrines of Christ more conducive to moral prin- 
ciples and better adapted to the use of rational beings 
than any other which have come to my knowledge." 

Of Qourse he was persecuted. When he was a very 
young man, his father turned him out and told him 
never to darken his doorstep again. After his father's 
death, his mother bitterly attacked him. Orthodox 
Hindu leaders did everything they could against him, 
but he did not swerve from his course. If Clive was 
the founder of the British Empire in India, Bajah Bam 
Mohan Boy was the founder of the modern, progressive 

2 India's Nation Builders, p. 40. 



36 II^DIA ON THE MARCH 

India of today. In many ways he was a nobler figure 
than Clive. The battles which he fought were just as 
hard and they demanded a higher kind of courage. His 
successes were not so spectacular as those of Clive, but 
they probably had a larger influence on the inner life 
of India.j 

This great pioneer of the new India was the first of a 
notable group of brave and able reformers. Many of 
them graduated from mission schools and colleges. Al- 
most all of them felt the influence of Christ. They 
attacked Indian idolatry, sometimes at the risk of their 
lives. They denounced India's treatment of its women, 
saying that little girls had a right to their childhood 
and must not be married until they were at least four- 
teen. They supported schools for girls which were 
generally under the care of women missionaries. They 
even dared to break the rules of the great sacred system 
of caste. A few of these reformers were killed, espe- 
cially those who were bold enough to become Christian. 
Almost all of them were persecuted by orthodox Hindus. 
But every year Indians in increasing numbers were 
educated in English schools and were getting ideas of 
liberty and democracy. More and more Indian students 
and leaders were following Ram Mohan Roy by honor- 
ing Christ and His teaching of brotherhood. Gradu- 
ally reform and progress gained ground. 

During this period more Christian missionaries were 
establishing their schools and hospitals and churches. 
Western railways were introduced, and on their trains 
Indians of all castes travelled together. In the new 
schools that were springing up, children of many differ- 
ent castes studied and played together. Old India was 




( 1 ) 'J'he liumble eh'ica brings a new student to the gate of a 
Christian college. One sixth of all the students of India are 
enrolled in mission colleges. 

(2) A game of atia-patia. The students realize that India must 
have men of strong bodies and fearless spirits, men able to play 
the game as a team and take failure with a smile. 



THE MEETING GROUND OF EAST AND WEST 37 

gradually being changed. The terrible wrongs of In- 
dian women and girls, of the outcastes, and of all un- 
fortunates were very slowly but very surely growing 
less, and the spirit of public service was increasing. 

Then came the great Indian mutiny of 185 Y in which 
many regiments of Indian sepoys shot their British 
officers, killed white women and children and native 
Christians, captured the old capital city of Delhi and 
several other cities, and, with the help of some of the 
people, attempted to set up again the old Mogul Em- 
pire. This crisis was really like the Boxer Uprising in 
China. It was the last violent attempt of the old East 
to keep out the new West. 

When the mutiny failed and, by proclamation of 
Queen Victoria, the Crown took over from the East 
India Company the control of India, most educated In- 
dians accepted the new order. Railway travel grew 
popular and increased immensely. Factories began to 
ispring up. High schools and colleges were crowded with 
eager students. Hundreds and thousands of Indians 
dejB.ed Hindu prejudice by crossing the "black water" 
to finish their education in England and America. The 
West seemed to be gradually dominating India. 

In 1905, little Japan's victory over great Russia sent 
a thrill of new hope throughout Asia. Educated In- 
dians began to ask, "Why cannot India become free 
and strong like Japan ?" Many ardent young men an- 
swered, "We can and we will." A well-known mission- 
ary tells of a typical young Indian who, before the 
Russo-Japanese War, had rarely thought of India as a 
whole; his ambitions had centered in his family and 



38 INDIA ON" THE MAEGH 

caste. But tlie night when he heard of the defeat of the 
Eussian fleet, a clear vision of his country came to him. 
India appeared as a desolate mother claiming his love, 
and the vision was so vivid that for months afterwards 
he could shut his eyes and see it again. Like Paul, he set 
out at once to obey his vision. Because he saw that 
until the Mohammedans and Hindus came together 
there could he no united India, he began by seeking to 
win the friendship of the Mohammedans. From this 
he went on in his service of his country, risking his life 
in work in a plague camp, then going into relief work 
in a famine stricken district. Japan's victory had 
changed his whole life.^ 

Thousands of young Indians went through experi- 
ences like this, and a new spirit came over the land. 
Since 1905, agitation and patriotic movements have 
been going on all the time in India. 

Mr. Gokhale, the strongest Indian social and political 
leader of the last generation, founded the Servants of 
India Society. This is a little group of highly educated 
Indians, most of them Brahmans, who dedicate their 
lives to the service of those in need. When they enter 
the Society, even though they could earn many times 
as much elsewhere, they are given a salary of twenty- 
five dollars a month, only enough for a bare living. 
Whenever famines have come, the members of this So- 
ciety have organized very effective relief. They have 
gone into the factory districts of Bombay and have 
tried to brighten and improve the hard life of the mill- 
hands by forming clubs, by helping them to keep clear 
of drink and to save money, and by showing their 

QThe Renaissance in India, Andrews, p. 19. 



THE MEETIIS-G GROUND OF EAST AND WEST 39^ 

f riendsliip in many ways. They are in the forefront of 
every social reform in India. 

Mr. Kelkar started a plow factory where he manu- 
factures modern steel plows to replace the old wooden 
ones which Indians have used for centuries. This in 
itself is a great service to India, but Mr. Kelkar does- 
more. He is making his factory a model, where work- 
ing conditions are healthful and where the life of the 
workers is worth while. There is a recreation ground 
for the employees, and Mr. Kelkar himself freely joins 
them in tennis and other games, though some of them 
are lowest outcastes. 

One of India's noblest women, Mrs. Ramabai Ranade, 
opened the Seva Sadan,^ or "Home of Service, '^ in which 
women learn to serve much as the men do in the Serv- 
ants of India Society. There have been great temper- 
ance movements also. Ram Mohan Roy's Brahma 
Samaj has kept up its service. The Arya Samaj is a 
powerful reform movement among Indians which is 
unlike most of the rest in that it is definitely opposed 
to Christianity. 

All of these movements and many more like them are 
the mighty indirect result of Christian missions. They 
are winning Indian leaders away from the old Hindu 
idea that life is something evil to be escaped, and are 
teaching them the Christian lesson that the life of ser- 
vice is something good, to be gladly followed. The^r 
show how rapidly and powerfully the Christian leaven 
has been working. Many of the leaders reject organized 
Christianity because they think of it as Western. But 
their whole outlook is being changed by the silent, per- 

4 Sayvah Sudden. 



4'0 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

vasive influence of Christ whicli has come into the life 
of India largely through modern missionary activity. 
One of the first and ablest of India's young reformers, 
Mr. G. K. Devadhar of the Servants of India Society, 
frankly acknowledges that he received his own impulse 
to such service from a mission school and says, *^ Chris- 
tian missions have played a large part in the great in- 
tellectual and spiritual evolution that has slowly gone 
on in this country during the past century, and they 
have been one of the potent factors which have produced 
modern India." 

Intense political activity has gone on also, and even 
high school boys have had a share in it. There have 
been plots and bombs and the shooting of officials. In- 
dian students have often shown that they were willing 
to die for their country. Two political parties have de- 
veloped : one, of radicals who have urged India to break 
away from Great Britain at once. Some in this party 
would use only peaceful measures. Others are prepared, 
if necessary, to use force. The other party is made up 
of more conservative men who want to accept British 
help for some years to come. These two parties have 
fought for the control of the I^ational Congress which 
has been the great Indian gathering in which educated 
Indians meet to express their opinions on public ques- 
tions. The more radical party now dominates the Con- 
gress. An interesting fact about this Congress is that 
the only language which all who attend can understand 
and use is the English language. As a matter of fact, 
it is the English type of freedom which the Indian 
ISTational Congress is demanding, and the English Ian- 



THE MEETING GROUND OF EAST AND WEST 41 

guage is the natural one to use in making the demand. 

When the World War came, one of the questions 
which British leaders asked was, "What will India do ? 
Will she use this chance to become independent? Or 
will she he loyal to our cause ?" Britain did not have 
long to wait for an answer. The educated leaders of 
India were roused to anger by Germany's ruthless treat- 
ment of Belgium. The message she sent to Britain was, 
"We are with you.". Her leaders said it, the news- 
papers said it, the native princes said it, and the Indian 
soldiers said it. It sent a thrill through both England 
and India when the brown veteran troops of India 
marched into the great first battle of Ypres and played 
a large part in saving the day and thus in saving the 
cause of the Allies. 

Canada and the United States are proud of the past 
they played in the War, and well they may be; but 
perhaps America's aid would have come too late if it 
had not been for a million and a quarter of India's 
picked young men who served — and many of whom died 
— for the great cause of the world. From all over India 
they came, sturdy Marathas from the West, little Gurk- 
has from the far ISTortheast, tall Sikhs from the Punjab, 
bearded Mohammedans from the United Provinces, 
Christians from many places. For the most part they 
fought well. Some of them fought wonderfully well^ 
even winning the most coveted of all British war dec- 
orations — the Victoria Cross. Some Indian princes 
left the luxuries of their Oriental courts and themselves 
donned khaki and fought in France. Others turned 
palaces into hospitals and gave vast sums of money. 
Indian women met and sewed for the Red Cross. Even 



'42 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

the ragged little Indian school children somehow earned 
and gave money for the starving Belgian children. 

Great Britain was not slow to show her gratitude to 
India for this priceless aid. Mr. Montagu, then Secre- 
tary of State for India, announced that India would 
he given increasing control of her own affairs until her 
people were governing themselves. The phrase he used 
i:o describe this was "the progressive realization of re- 
sponsible government." Mr. Montagu came to India 
and with the Viceroy prepared a bold and able plan for 
:giving her home rule. 

But Indian leaders had come to understand their 
power through the War, and many Indians said, "This 
plan is not enough. "We want to control all our affairs 
at once." Immediately after the War, the Moham- 
medans in India were greatly stirred because it looked 
■to them as though the Allies intended to destroy the 
power of Turkey, which was the only great Moham- 
medan country left in the world. For this and other 
reasons, there has been unrest. Bioting has broken out 
liere and there. One British general, in order to stop 
i;he rioting, ruthlessly shot down hundreds of Indians. 
After an investigation by a Royal Commission he was 
publicly condemned by the British Government; but 
the Indians feel that the punishment was inadequate, 
^nd the resentment remains. Also, the Russian Bolshe- 
vists have been working against the British in the north. 
They cannot send armies over the Khyber Pass, but 
they have been sending Bolshevist teachers to try to 
make trouble. India is no quiet, peaceful place today. 
It is pulsing with new life. 

In the period after the War Mohandas Gandhi be- 



THE MEETING GROUND OF EAST AND WEST 43 

came in many ways the most interesting figure in In- 
dia or, for that matter, in the whole world. He is a 
thin, inconspicuous little man, and he wears the coarsest 
and simplest of Indian clothing. Yet in those critical 
days he became by his utter fearlessness, by his sheer 
devotion, and by his purity of character the acknowl- 
edged leader in all India. Millions of Indians, espe- 
cially her educated young men, were ready to follow 
him anywhere. They called him MaJiaima/ "the Great 
Souled One," and not only acclaimed him as a popu- 
lar hero, but worshipped him as a saint. Probably this 
Indian leader has had a greater influence over more 
people than any other living man. 

Mahatma Gandhi does not believe in Western ma- 
terial civilization, and he does not want to see India 
Westernized. He wants her people to remain simple in 
their habits. He does not believe in the government 
schools. They are too Western. He wants an Indian 
system of education. He believes that the British Gov- 
ernment has done great wrongs to India, but he tells 
his followers that they must not shed blood to right 
these wrongs. Practically, what he tells them to do 
is to go on strike against the Government and against 
everything Western. He calls his doctrine Satyagraha/' 
or "Soul Force." It is generally spoken of in English as 
"non-cooperation." "Don't send your boys to a Gov- 
ernment school. Don't vote. Don't serve the Govern- 
ment. Don't wear clothes made of Western cloth. Re- 
vive your old hand-weaving industry and your old-time 
simple life in every village and city," he says. So his 
followers wear coarse homespun clothing and the 
5 Ma-hat-ma, "a" as in far. e Suttya graha. 



44 INDIA OHf THE MARCH 

"Gandhi'' cap made of a simple piece of rougli native 
cloth. 

In November of 1921, while the Prince of Wales 
was being received with great splendor at the port of 
Bombay, Gandhi, as a general protest against his visit, 
was making a bonfire of Western cloth in the native 
city. At the same time, rioting broke out in the crowded 
parts of the city. Mobs of Hindus and Mohammedans 
attacked police stations, street cars, and automobiles. 
"No one who did not wear the Gandhi cap was safe on 
the streets of that part of Bombay. The disorder de- 
veloped into a race riot against Parsis and Anglo-In- 
dians. Several Parsis and Europeans and one Ameri- 
can, as well as many of the rioters, were killed. Gandhi 
was heartbroken. He did everything he could to dis- 
perse the mobs and finally resorted to a typical Indian 
device. He sent out word that he would not eat or 
drink till peace was restored. And peace was soon re- 
stored, for none of the rioters could endure the reproach 
of having been the cause of the death of their great 
saint. 

This mob violence in Bombay seemed, for a time, 
to convince Mahatma Gandhi that India was not 
•yet ready for non-violent non-cooperation. The day 
after the rioting, he issued a statement. These few sen- 
tences from it show its spirit of true penitence : "We 
have failed when we ought to have succeeded, for yester- 
day was the day of our trial. We were under our pledge 
bound to protect the person of the Prince from any 
harm or insult. And we broke that pledge inasmuch 
as any one of us insulted or injured a single European 
or any other who took part in the welcome to the Prince. 



THE MEETING GEOUND OF EAST AND WEST 45 

They were as miicli entitled to take part in the welcome 
as we were to refrain. 'Nor can I shirk my own per- 
sonal responsihility. I am more instrumental than 
any other in bringing into being the spirit of revolt. I 
find myself not fully capable of controlling and dis- 
ciplining that spirit. I must do penance for it. ... I 
have personally come deliberately to the conclusion that 
mass civil disobedience cannot be started for the pres- 
ent." Yet it was not long afterward that Gandhi pre- 
sided over the Congress which advocated civil disobedi- 
ence. 

As a result, another terrible outbreak of mob violence 
occurred. Once more Gandhi expressed deepest repent- 
ance. Yet even then he did not repudiate his cam- 
paign to overthrow the Government. Finally, on March 
18, 1922, after a trial at which he pleaded guilty, he 
was convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the Govern- 
ment and was sentenced to six years of imprisonment. 
In sentencing Mr. Gandhi the judge expressed the high- 
est admiration for his personal character and the deep- 
est regret that he was compelled to find him guilty. On 
his side Mr, Gandhi complimented the judge on the fair- 
ness of the trial. This great-souled leader in his final 
message to his followers commanded them not to use 
violence as a protest against his imprisonment. And 
no violent protest occurred. 

As a politician, Gandhi made what he himself called 
"Himalayan blunders" which have done measureless 
harm. As a social and religious leader, he has done 
untold good. He has called his people to give up the 
use of all liquor, to live pure lives, to recognize the 
despised outcastes as human beings and fellow-citizens. 



46 INDIA OW THE MARCH 

He honors Christ. Indeed, he receives much of the in- 
spiration for his work from Him. He has been a won- 
derful influence for the moral uplift of India and for 
the establishment of brotherhood among her divided 
peoples. 

Gandhi's great failure comes from his indiscriminate 
rejection of everything from the West. In this he is 
not so broad or so human as Ram Mohan Roy. He 
is absolutely right in wanting India to keep her own 
distinctive civilization, but he has not succeeded, and 
he ought not to succeed in his boycott of everything 
Western, even Western schools and hospitals. 

We admire him and other Indian leaders for their in- 
dependence of spirit, for their refusal to join the world 
in its scramble for ease and luxury. We Westerners 
care far too much for automobiles and movies and all 
sorts of mere things. Mr. Gandhi has lived as a cul- 
tured gentleman while wearing the coarsest clothing 
and eating simplest food. He has not wanted to see 
the evils of our big factory cities spread in India, and 
he has been right in wanting to save India from these 
things. India ought to stay simple. Jesus lived a sim- 
ple, frugal life. Yet men like Mr. Gandhi cannot build 
a Chinese wall around India and keep everything West- 
ern out, and, what is more, her best leaders do not want 
to do such a foolish thing. For her own sake and for 
the sake of other people, she must remain a part of the 
modern world. 

Many of India's ablest men, like the Right Honorable 
V. S. Shastri, one of the British Empire's seven pleni- 
potentiaries at the Washington Conference, do not be- 
lieve in non-cooperation and are helping to make Mr. 



THE MEETING GEOUKD OF EAST AND WEST 47 

Montagu's new plan of home rule a fair success. They 
seem to me to represent the truest and best spirit of 
modern India. They believe in India and her civiliza- 
tion, but they can also see good in Britain and her 
civilization. They are not controlled by race prejudice 
and hatred, but are working toward the closer coopera- 
tion of West and East. 

Eabindranath Tagore, in a remarkable article on 
"The Union of Cultures," directly combats Gandhi's 
principles. Here are a few sentences from this article: 
"By their present separateness. East and West are now 
in danger of losing the fruits of their age-long labors. 
Eor want of . . . union, the East is suffering from 
poverty and inertia, and the West, from lack of peace 
and happiness. . . . !N'othing is more obvious than that 
the nations have come together, yet are not united. The 
agony of this presses on the whole world. . . . Shaw- 
tam,^ Shivam, Advaitam — "Unity is peace, for unity is 
the good." It is the dream of my heart that the culture 
centers of our country should also be the meeting ground 
of the East and West."^ 

If Indian radicals should succeed in doing away with 
the strong British rule in India this year or within five 
years, the result would be nothing less than terrible 
chaos and bloodshed. That would be indeed a "Hima- 
layan blunder" which would almost destroy their own 
beloved Motherland. The Moplah riots around Calicut 
in 1921 are a hint of what would happen. The Moplahs 
are fierce, intolerant Mohammedans. Indian agitators 
led them against the Government, but when these Mo- 
hammedans rose, they committed atrocities not so much 

7 Pronounce "am" as "urn." sThe Nation, Calcutta, Nov., 1921. 



48 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

against Europeans as against their Hindu neighbors. 
They forced over a thousand of them at the point of 
the sword to become Mohammedans. If it had not been 
for the British military power, there is no telling how 
far the Moplahs would have gone. A shrewd Indian 
Mohammedan has said that if the British power were 
withdrawn, his fellow-Mohammedans would come 
swooping down on India from the northwest, the Mo- 
hammedans in India would join them, and rivers of 
blood would flow. India is still too ignorant and is 
divided into too many castes and races and religions; 
there is too much mutual suspicion and hate and too 
little public spirit. If the British should leave tomor- 
row, rivers of blood would indeed flow. Millions would 
starve as they have been doing in Russia. It would be 
a terrible calamity. 

When we picture what would happen in India today 
if her present government should fail, we see how im- 
portant it is that Indians and Englishmen should find 
a way of working together. Where shall they find it ? 
In the world-wide spirit of Jesus Christ. Many In- 
dians and Englishmen realize this. The leaders in the 
great task of bringing the two races together are found, 
for the most part, among the educated Indians who, like 
Tagore, have strongly felt the influence of Christ's 
spirit. On the other hand, when English officials are 
truly Christian in spirit, Indians still trust them and 
respond to them. Missionaries and Indian Christians 
have a wonderful chance to show both sides the way 
out of the present crisis. It is deeply significant that 
Jesus was born in Asia, yet in a part of Asia which had 



THE MEETING GKOUND OF EAST AND WEST 4^ 

felt the currents of European life. He is the Master of 
all. If Westerners and Easterners can only come close 
to Him, their suspicions and jealousies will melt away, 
and in their place we shall have mutual trust and re- 
spect and common efforts for the good of India and of 
the world. 

The East needs the West, and the West needs the 
East. I helieve that in the end they are not going to 
fight in India, but that they are going to cooperate. 
Just now jealousies are keen and distrust is strong. 
Yet the leaders of the great middle classes still look 
upon the British rulers as their friends. In general, so 
do native princes, the merchants and land owners, the 
outcastes, and many progressive leaders. The final 
solution of the whole hard problem of race relationship 
is to be found in Christian brotherhood. That is the 
Good 'News of Christ for troubled India today. 



THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE 

I used to think him heathen, 

Just because — well, don't you see, 
He didn't speak "God's English," 

And he didn't look like me ; 
He had a burnt complexion 

Which is heathen, goodness knows; 
He ate a heathen's rations, 

And he wore a heathen's clothes. 
But there's a s'prising skinful 

In that bloke from far away: 
He fights like any Christian, 

And I've caught the beggar pray; 
He's kind to little kiddies, 

And there's written in his eyes 
The willingness to render 

All a Christian's sacrifice. 
Yes, you'd know him for a heathen 

If you judged him by the hide ; 
But, bless you, he's my brother, 

For he's just like me inside. 

— Robert Freeman 



Ill 

A Village Wrestler 

Most of tlie people of India belong to the respectable 
farmer castes. They live in her 720,000 villages where 
they cultivate their fields as their ancestors have done 
before them, generation after generation for a thousand 
years. They are hard-v^orking folk, sturdy and vsrithal 
attractive. Today, even these stolid villagers are being 
awakened from their age-long sleep. There is nothing 
more interesting in India than the way that these people 
are beginning to play a real part in the life of the land. 
Once I was suggesting to a city Brahman that the 
farmers had shrewd opinions which every leader must 
respect. ^'These villagers ? What are they ? Stones I" 
was his contemptuous reply. To their cost, the high- 
caste people of different parts of the country are find- 
ing that the middle classes are not stones. They are 
rousing themselves and intend to play their part in the 
new life of India. Indeed in the Madras Presidency 
the so-called non-Brahman party now controls the legis- 
lative council. The story which follows seeks to show 
how the ferment of new life is working among India's 
middle-class millions. 



' "Jail jail Appaji!^ Jail jail Appaji!" The 
shouts of the crowd rose from the river-bed where the 
village fair was going on. Even a widow at work in 
the heart of the neighboring village of l^imbgaon lis- 
tened eagerly. 

lAp-pa-jee, 

51 



62 INDIA 01^ THE MARCH 

^Wah!" she exclaimed. "Vithoba still smiles on 
our village. Our Appaji has the strength of an elephant 
and the quickness of a tiger. Who can withstand him !" 
And she paused in the preparation of the evening meal. 
As the noise drew nearer, she left her little windowless 
cook-room, and carefully placed herself in a dark corner 
near the open door, where she could be somewhat shaded. 
yet could see all that went on in the street. 

Soon the crowd of excited villagers came surging by. 
A cloud of dust rose around them. The gray, window- 
less walls of the mud houses that lined the narrow street 
on either side hemmed them in. 

''Jail jail Appaji!" they called in rhythmic repeti- 
tion. In the center of the crowd, borne aloft on the 
stout shoulders of some of his young fellow-villagers, 
was the object of all this attention the broadly smiling 
Appaji. 

Around his almost bare body he had hastily thrown a 
dhoter, or long, thin, cotton cloth, which did not conceal 
the rippling muscles of his arms and chest. There was 
a ruddy look of health about his face; and the smile 
with which he looked around him was a most attractive 
combination of amused good nature and honest pride. 

1^0 wonder the women of the village smiled, and 
the boys went wild with excitement. Por was not this 
their own Appaji Bhosle who had for years been famed 
as the best wrestler in all the region ? And had he not 
just now, after three years of absence from all wrestling 
matches, defeated the champion of the rival village, 
Shingavi, in the toughest bout of his career, and that 
at their own yearly yatra, or religious fair ? 

Most conspicuous in all the crowd, his high, clear call 



A VILLAGE WRESTLER 53 

easily heard above the other shouts, was a ten-year-old 
boy who danced along beside the village hero. '^Majya 
hapane tiala jinJcile/' he called. ^'My father beat him ! 
My father beat him !" It was Jayavant,^ Appaji's elder 
child; and when the crowd reached the village rest- 
house and set Appaji down, the little boy leaped into 
his father's arms. 

In the meantime, men had gone bustling about to 
prepare an impromptu celebration. From somewhere 
a sweet-smelling garland of roses and jasmine was 
brought and placed about Appaji's neck. Attar of roses 
was sprinkled on his uparana, or long scarf, and san- 
dalwood paste was placed on the back of his hand. 

Appaji's acknowledgment was brief and direct as 
befitted a sturdy Maratha farmer. ^'Friends, I thank 
you for honoring me thus. I am glad that by the help 
of God I was able to uphold the honor of our village. 
As you all know, I have been giving much time lately 
to the Satya Shodah Samaj ^ — The Society of the Search 
for Truth. We aim to bring back the ancient glory of 
the Maratha name. 'No need to remind you how our 
Shivaji and our other heroes conquered much of India. 
They had Tukaram and Kamdas, the saints, as well 
as Shivaji, the warrior, in those days. 

"If we want to regain our ancient name, we must 
keep up our ancient sports ; but we too must once more 
worship God as Shivaji did, — and we must send our 
boys to school. How else can we free ourselves from 
our slavery to the clever Brahman officials and the slip- 
pery money lender ? I tell you that the English Sirhar 
(Government) means well by us. It is the under offi- 

2Jay-vunt. 3 guttya Shodak Sum-mfij. 



54 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

cials of our own land who keep ns down. Letjis start 
a school for our boys !" 

When he had finished, the crowd was silent. Then 
the gray-haired village patil (headman) replied: '^Ap- 
paji, thou hast spoken well. Let us start a school. 
Then will our village not he helpless in the hands of the 
Brahmans and the money lenders like a lamb caught 
by two wolves, and we may regain our ancient glory. 
In speaking to us thus, thou hast done us a greater 
service than by winning the wrestling match. What 
say you? Shall we ask the Government for a school? 
Or shall we go to the missionary ?" 

^'The missionary sahib live^near at hand," replied 
Appaji. ^^He speaks our language and knows our ways. 
He is our friend. Moreover, he will teach our boys, not 
only to read and figure, but to keep strong speak truth, 
and to worship God. I give my opinion for asking him." 

A general murmur of approval came from the crowd 
of men who were sitting about the rest-house* 

The ^^missionary sahib" was the Eev. John Greyson, 
well known far and wide as the people's friend. Sev- 
eral who were sitting there owed their lives to the relief 
work he had superintended in the terrible famine days 
of 1900. So it was decided that they should ask him for 
a school. 

Appaji did not let the interest in the village school 
grow cold. He had attended a big convention of his 
fellow-Marathas three years before which had opened 
his eyes to his people's need of education. Ever since 
then, he had been trying to have a school started in his 
village, but up to this time no one had shown much in- 
terest in his project Now the patil, another leader, 



A VILLAGE iWEESTLEE 56 

and he went to the near-by village of Chincliore, where 
the missionary lived, to make their request. All prom- 
ised help toward the teacher's salary. Appaji him- 
self offered to lend a rude farm building for the use 
of the school at the start. There were many other vil- 
lages that were asking the missionary for schools, and 
in the last analysis, it was the earnestness and sincerity 
of Appaji himself that finally decided Mr. Greyson to 
send a teacher to Nimbgaon. 

'Not long after Appaji's little son, Jayavant, had be- 
gun his first lessons, news of far greater events than 
wrestling matches reached Nimbgaon. One evening 
Gangaramji, the new teacher, brought his weekly news- 
paper to the village square and read how the English 
Sirkar had entered the World War. Soon rumors 
came that the Government was asking for new recruits 
for the Maratha regiments, then, that some of the In- 
dian army had actually gone over the '^black water" to 
fight. No one was more eager for the news than Appaji. 
No one seemed to think so much about it. Gangaramji 
was surprised one day to have him say, ^^Why should 
not I go ? I am young and strong. Always m_y ances- 
tors responded to the appeal to arms. The British 
Sirkar is just and good. Will it not help us Marathas 
to regain our ancient honor if we do our part V^ 

"But how about Jayavant and little Tara and the 
rest of your family, Appaji?" said the teacher. Eti- 
quette forbade his mentioning Appaji's wife by name, 
yet he was sure that a real affection existed between the 
big villager and Sitabai, his wife. 

A shadow passed over Appaji's face. Nevertheless, 
his reply was clear and simple. "They will lack for 



56 IJSTDIA ON THE MAECH 

nothing. We have fields and gardens. My older brother, 
Balavant, is in charge of the family affairs. He will 
look out for them. You will give Jayavant especial 
care, will you not V 

"Yes, I promise you that I will/' answered Ganga- 
ramji. 

So in the cool dawn of a winter day, Appaji and a 
little group of fellow-recruits tramped away to the 
training camp in Poena. The good-bys to his wife and 
little daughter were said at home, but Jayavant ran 
along beside his father. Indeed, most of the men of the 
village came some distance to "start them on their path." 

In a few days the post-runner brought Appaji's first 
letter. It was addressed in a scrawling hand to Jaya- 
vant, and Gangaramji, who was postmaster as well as 
teacher, read it first to the family and later to the vil- 
lagers. It was simple and brief, giving a glimpse of the 
busy life of the training camp and bringing his greetings 
to his fellow-villagers and the members of his family. 

Great was the stir caused in the village by the receipt 
of this letter. It was gravely discussed by the village 
fathers. The women talked about it next morning as 
they gathered around the village well with their big, 
brass water- jars to get the morning supply of water. 
The old patil summed it up when he said: "A great 
man is our Appaji! See how he has learned with his 
own hand to write a letter ! His thought is always for 
the honor of our village and the good of our people. 
Hay Vithoba and all the gods guard him Hey, Yish- 
vanath, wilt say mantras for his safety ?" 

"Yea," said Yishvanath, "tomorrow they shall be 
:said." 



A VILIiAGE WRESTLEK 57 

Kow Yishvanath was the village Brahman, and he 
loved Appaji not at all, for that doughty wrestler had 
dared openly to challenge the right of the Brahmans 
to control the life of the village. He dared not, how- 
ever, do anything but say yes. Indeed, he was very 
glad to receive the two-anna piece which the headman 
unknotted from his waist and handed to him. 

Other letters from Appaji followed, in one of which 
he told of being made a petty officer. Then came one 
in which he said: "We go tonight. Take care of 
Tara. All thought of her marriage must await my re- 
turn. Let her go to school. Bemember to guard the 
honor of the Bhosle name." 

Long weeks elapsed before the next word came, this 
time from Basra, port of entry of Mesopotamia. It 
reflected graphically the terror of the sea to the simple 
Indian countrymen. "In a great boat," he wrote, "we 
went out over the black waters, broad as the sky. Soon 
we could see Mumbai (Bombay) no more. Then the 
mountains disappeared. The waters rose up and tossed 
our boat as I used to toss thee in our play. There lay 
we all, sick as children who had eaten green mangoes. 
We said one to another that we should never again see 
our homes, for the boat was lost in the great black 
water with no land anywhere about us, only the angry 
waves. Then our Kaptan took one or two of us to the 
back of the boat and showed us a white path stretching 
back from the center of the boat. ^Does that path go 
all the way to Mumbai?' we asked. ^Surely it does,' 
he answered, *and when the war is done, over that path 
shall a great boat like this bear you back.' Then were 
we assured that we should return to our homes. For 



58 INDIA OIT THE MAECH 

truly I had thouglit that we were lost in the waste of 
water and never again should I see thee or set foot in 
ITimbgaon." 

Further letters told of fierce fighting in the Euphrates 
valley, where even Indian troops wilted under the fur- 
nace heat. 

Sitabai went often to the village shrine to pray for 
her husband. Finally, in a big ofiicial envelope came 
the word that all had dreaded. Appaji was seriously 
wounded. He had been in a fierce engagement in cross- 
ing a river where Turkish machine guns were playing 
relentlessly on them from the opposite bank. Two at- 
tempts to throw over a pontoon bridge had failed. A 
third was on the point of succeeding. Appaji and his 
platoon had been ordered to be the first to cross to at- 
tack the machine guns. Then the last of the engineer- 
ing squad fell, leaving the bridge incomplete and use- 
less. Appaji saw the crisis, ran through a stream of 
bullets to the incompleted section and, single handed, 
by sheer strength, coolness, and courage, repaired the 
frail bridge. His platoon rushed forward, enough of 
them gaining the opposite bank to establish a bridge 
head. Night brought reinforcements, and the enemy 
were beaten back. But Appaji was found lying with one 
leg broken and two bullet wounds in his body. The 
letter went on to say that, in token of the gratitude of 
the Empire for his bravery, his commander would rec- 
ommend that he be awarded a decoration and receive a 
grant of land lying near Nimbgaon to be handed down 
as an inam or hereditary estate from generation to 
generation in his line forever. Appaji was in a hospital 
in critical condition, but with good hope of recovery, 



A VILLAGE WRESTLER 69 

and wlien strong enough, lie was to be sent back to India. 

After a time news came from a hospital in Bombay 
that he had arrived there. Then, one day, the post- 
runner brought the longed-for word that he had been 
allowed to leave the hospital and would reach the rail- 
road station of Ahmednagar next morning. 

"Khandoba has blessed ns. He is coming home/^ 
said Sitabai with trembling voice. 

As soon as possible, Balavantrao and Jayavant 
started in a bullock cart for the thirty-mile journey, 
and they were at the station when the train came in. 
At first they did not recognize the thin soldier with the 
large khaki-colored turban. But in a moment, Jayavant 
rushed forward, calling, "Bapa ! Bapa !" tears running 
down his cheeks in sheer joy at seeing the father who 
was also his hero. 

Two long years had passed since Appaji had seen 
his boy. He held him at arms' length, and the look 
of love and pride deepened in his eyes as he saw what 
a fine, tall lad Jayavant had grown to be. 

'^How far have you got in school V^ he asked. 

"I'm just finishing the third book. Gangaramji says 
that I should now go on to Chinchore to the mission 
boarding-school, but the family does not want to send 
me." 

"We'll arrange all that," said Appaji. "How are 
your mother and little Tara ?" 

"All welL Mother can eat nothing since your mes- 
sage came. She thinks only of your coming," said Jaya- 
vant. "Tara can read and write and has taught mother 
a little, too." 

Soon they were seated in the crude, joggling, two- 



60 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

wheeled cart and had started on the slow journey to 
I^imbgaon. As they went, Balavantrao told the news 
of village and household, — the death of the patil, the 
dispute as to whose right it was to succeed him, and 
the consequent reopening of an old village feud, the 
growth of the progressive Satya Shodak Samaj in which 
Appaji had been so much interested, and the attempts 
of the village Brahman to prevent it, the fierce sudden 
hailstorm which had come, as it sometimes will in 
India, beating down the growing sugar-cane in their 
mala, or irrigated garden, and a thousand other pieces 
of local news of intense interest to the returning soldier. 
Part of the way Appaji slept, but as the cart reached 
an eminence a few miles from his village, he looked 
lovingly forward to the patch of green trees in the midst 
of the plain that marked the site of ITimbgaon, its only 
two-storied house — their ancestral home — thrusting up 
a bit of gray in the midst of the gTeen. 

Half a mile from the village, the picturesque native 
band of five players met the travelers, and for the rest 
of the journey, they went in slow procession heralded by 
its wild, weird music. The welcome in the village 
square, with garlands and speeches, was indeed a warm 
one. JSTimbgaon had been proud of Appaji the wrestler, 
but her pride in Appaji the war hero was far deeper. 

Then came the quiet home coming, sweet little Tara 
hugging her father close, and all the household crowd- 
ing around. "While others were about, Sitabai contented 
herself with ministering to Appaji's tired body; ar- 
ranging a comfortable place for him to recline, bringing 
him a drink, watching him with eager love. But when 
each little family in the larger joint family group had 



A VILLAGE WRESTLER 61 

retired to its own section of the home, she restrained 
herself no longer, but even as she busied herself about 
the preparation of dinner, poured out truly Oriental 
expressions of love and care. Appaji responded and 
settled back in the little dark room in restfulness and 
utter contentment. 

It is hard for us dwellers in a new country? to appre- 
ciate what the village of his ancestors and of his own 
birth means to an Indian. All the principal interests 
of his life center here. The doctors had been right in 
thinking that what Appaji most needed now to complete 
his recovery was to come back to his home. 

In a few weeks came the problem of Jayavant's edu- 
cation. He had finished the village school. Ganga- 
ramji urged Appaji to send him on to the boarding- 
school at Chinchore. Sitabai was fearful. Most of the 
women and the older men opposed such an innovation. 
Vishvanath the Brahman denounced the move. Jaya- 
vant would lose caste in the Christian school, he said. 
His companions would be Christians from among the 
despised outcastes. His manners would be corrupted. 
"Who knows but that he may himself turn Christian V 
But the father was firm as a rock. The boy was to go 
to the Chinchore school. This school has a special hostel 
for Maratha boys. He could eat food cooked by 
his fellow-castemen and could thus observe the funda- 
mental rules of caste. But he could study and play with 
the Christian boys. So one fine day Jayavant went off 
to Chinchore to school. 

At first all seemed strange enough, and the Maratha 
lad was shy. But it doesn't take boys long to break 
through artificial barriers. Jayavant inherited his 



62 IlirDIA OIT THE MARCH 

father's love of all games. His dearest ambition was 
to be a great wrestler, and it was not long before be was 
in demand for games of atia patia and ball, while he 
easily vanquished even larger boys in Jcusti — the wres- 
tling match — ^which has, in the life of Indians, the place 
which football holds with American students. His mind 
was keen, too, and he did well at his lessons. 

In the beginning, Jayavant didn't know what to make 
of the quiet Sundays with the service in the big church ; 
but he liked the singing. He asked: "Where is your 
Christian God ? I want to see his image. This is his 
temple, isn't it ?" It took him a long time to think that 
it was worship at all to sit on a bench in a big building 
and sing and listen to a sermon and to close one's eyes 
while the minister offered a prayer. The worship that 
he had known had been to bow and leave his little tribute 
of flowers or coin on the threshold of a dark shrine, 
from the opposite wall of which glistened and gleamed 
the hideous features of a little stone idol. One of the 
young teachers soon became the boy's fast friend and 
talked it all over with him. 

"Why don't you have a shrine and an image ?" asked 
Jayavant. 

"Because God is everywhere, like the sunlight, and 
is so great and good that we dare not try to picture Him 
as an ugly little image," the teacher answered. "All 
we need to do is to think about Him and speak to Him 
wherever we are. He is always ready to answer us and 
help us." 

Gradually Jayavant came to understand and enter 
into Christian worship. In school, too, he was studying 
the Bible and came to admire some of the men and 



A VILLAGE WEESTLEB 63 

women and boys and girls that it told about. When he 
went home for his first vacation, he had many questions 
to ask of his father. 

^'Mj boy/' said Appaji, ^^I have been talking much 
with Gangaramji about this Christian religion. Long 
have I felt that something was the matter with our vil- 
lage faith. I have thought that perhaps it was because 
our Brahman was a small, greedy man; but while I 
have been away, I have come to feel that the trouble 
is with our religion itself. It keeps us apart from each 
other in different castes. It doesn't even let the Mahars 
(outcastes) into the temples. Yet over there I saw a 
Mahar driver save the life of my friend Manoharrao. 
The Christians say that all men are brothers. They 
are not always afraid that they have offended their God. 
They say He loves them. Study their Shastras (Scrip- 
tures) well and tell me all you learn." 

And whenever he came home, Jayavant did tell his 
father the Bible stories he had learned. He read to 
him from the Gospel of Mark, which had been given 
him in school, and Appaji thought long and deeply on 
all these things. 

Three years passed, and Jayavant was a strapping 
fellow of fifteen. He was still in the boarding-school 
at Chinchore, where he was now a leader in sports and 
in all the school life. A movement was taking place 
among the older boys. Easter was approaching, and a 
class had been formed for those who wanted to join the 
church. Jayavant's most intimate friend in school was 
Vithal, son of a Hindu holy man and grandson of the 
man who had been the most bitter opponent of the com- 
ing in of Christianity in all that region. Vithal was 



64 INDIA ON THE MAEOH 

in the class and had felt the call to become a Christian. 
Jayavant was also a member of the class and was stirred 
by that great sacred impulse that comes to most boys 
at about his age. It impelled him to come out boldly 
as a follower of Jesus. 

The World War was over and had brought to India 
an intense patriotism such as she had never known be- 
fore. Jayavant was his father's son and shared to the 
full this love for his Motherland. This only deepened 
his love for Christ, whom he had come to look upon as 
the only possible Saviour of his country. 

But the obstacles in the boy's way were staggering. 
He had realized this more and more clearly when he 
had gone home for vacations. ISTever a month passed 
without some ceremony in which he was expected to 
take part which involved worship of the idol and old 
superstition. His uncle could not build a well without 
having the Brahman say mantras over it. Hinduism 
was woven into the very fabric of his family life. 

This was not all. If he was baptized with the other 
boys, he would be an outcaste. Even his father and 
mother and little sister could no longer eat with him. 
His grandmother and his uncles, whom he loved, would 
regard him as a traitor to the family name. He would 
bring disgrace to them all. Quite likely no young man 
of good family and situation would be willing to marry 
his sister. It seemed to him that it meant pulling his 
life up by the roots. ^^It would be easier to die," he 
said to Vithal, the son of the holy man. 

*^Yes," Vithal replied; "it would be easier, but we 
aren't here to take the easy way. We must be loyal to 
our Master and to our Motherland." 



A VILLAGE WRESTLER 65 

About two weeks before Easter, Jayavant surprised 
the missionary "sahib" by asking for three-days' leave to 
go home. "I want to join the church on Easter Sunday, 
but I can't do it without talking it over with my father 
and mother," he said. 

So it happened that Appaji, who was working in a 
field beside the road that afternoon, heard a familiar 
voice call, '^'Are, Bapa !" and looked up from his plow 
to see Jayavant running toward him. His face lit up 
with love and pride as he watched his tall son come 
nearer, yet there was lurking in his eyes an anxiety, 
almost a fear, that had often been there during the last 
year when he thought of Jayavant. Warm indeed was 
the greeting of father and son, between whom existed a 
comradeship unusual in the Orient. 

"The sight of thee is like that of the new grass which 
springs up after the first rain. Come and sit under the 
big mango tree and tell me of thy school and what bring- 
eth thee home at this time," he said. So they walked 
over to the great tree exchanging news of school and 
village. 

When they were seated in the quiet nook, Appaji 
turned to Jayavant. He had seen the traces of struggle 
in the boy's eyes and in his manner. "My boy, what 
is it ?" he said. 

"Father, why didst thou send me to a Christian 
school?" he asked. 

Appaji saw in a flash what he meant. His fears 
had come true. He himself had come to believe in 
Christ as a great Guru, or Master, and even as an 
Avatar, or incarnation of God. He rebelled at much in 
Hinduism, especially against Brahman domination; but 



Q6 HTDIA ON" THE MAECH 

witli the easy tolerance of the Indian mind, he thought 
to retain the old while also accepting the new. He was 
not prepared to brave social ostracism and break from 
all the life which he held so dear by seeking Christian 
baptism. 

^^I sent yon there because it is a good school that 
teaches boys to speak truth and keep clean as well as 
to read and figure. Why do you ask ?" he said. 

"IText Sunday Vithal and other boys are going to 
be baptised," Jayavant replied. 

^^And thou wishest to join them ?" asked Appaji. 

"For weeks the thought of it has been with me/' 
said Jayavant. "Sometimes it has been as a ball of fire 
in my stomach. When Vithal, my friend, decided, I 
went off into the field alone to pray and think it over. 
Then there came to me, as it were, a message from 
heaven saying, Tear not, I will be with thee.' And 
I knew that He was calling me to brave every difficulty 
and be baptised. So I asked raza ^ (leave) and here 
lam." 

Appaji was silent for a long time. Then he said, 
"If thou dost this thing, thou canst never again live 
in our home or eat with us. I^o girl of our caste will 
marry thee. Thou wilt become an outcaste. Disgrace 
will come upon all our house. Hast thou thought of 
all this?" 

"Yes, I have thought of it. Worst of all, Bapa, I 
cannot be near thee." Jayavant could say no more for 
a long time. Great sobs shook him. Finally he added, 
"What will mother think — and Balavant kaka (Uncle 
Balavant) ?" 

4 Ruzza. 



A VILLAGE WBESTLEB 67 

Appaji was no less deeply moved. At length he re- 
plied, ^^God knows what they will say or do. As for 
me, I have feared this. It has been as a heavy burden 
on my head all the time. Yet I will not command thee 
not to do it. If I thought right to risk my life for 
the Sirkar, why should not my son risk life and more 
for his Master and his Motherland ?" He laid his arm 
across Jayavant's shoulder and said earnestly, ^'We 
shall have a hard time at home tonight. Let us pray 
God to strengthen us both." There in the field they 
prayed, Jayavant leading in earnest, simple words. 
Then they walked to the village and through the massive 
gate in the bastioned wall, built in the old days to keep 
out the robber bands, through the gray village street 
to their own home. The cattle had just come from 
the common pasture and jostled them in the street. 
They met the village patil who gave Jayavant a warm 
greeting. Every familiar sight and sound of the village 
seemed peculiarly dear to the boy, and he realized with 
fresh force what it was going to mean to give up the 
old life. 

That evening, with the men of the household gathered 
together, sitting cross-legged in a circle, and the women 
hovering in doorways behind, Jayavant told of his de- 
cision. A shriek from his grandmother interrupted the 
story. She came before him in threatening attitude. 

^'What sayest thou, Jayavant? Dost thou mean to 
tell us that thou wilt go into the Christian church and 
let the Christian pastor defile thee and make an out- 
caste of thee V 

^'Yes, Aji (grandmother)," said Jayavant, for he 
knew that further reply was useless. 



68 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

"And art thou, Appa, going to allow Jayavant to drag 
our fair name in the mire by his foolhardy childish 
act?" she said, turning fiercely to Appaji. 

"The hoy has received a command from God to do 
this thing, and I may not stand in his way," replied 
Appaji. 

■Shriek upon shriek from the old grandmother greeted 
this statement, and in these she was joined by the other 
women. 

"Are! Did I bear Appa for this, — that he should 
blacken all our faces ! Where will my granddaughters 
find husbands when our friends know what has come in 
our household ! Why are the gods thus angry with us ! 
As for me, I swear that the, day he does this thing, that 
day I cast myself into the well." 

When exhaustion brought comparative quiet, Bala- 
vantrao spoke. As oldest brother and head of the joint 
family, he had large authority in all important family 
affairs. "Mother, be silent!" he said. "Jayavant, I 
command thee to give up this silly idea. Better that 
thou cast thyself into the well and drown, than that 
thou shouldest do such a thing. I warn thee that we 
shall not allow it." A murmur of assent went around 
the circle. 

"Uncle, I cannot give it up," cried Jayavant. 

After an hour of futile discussion, the family council 
broke up in bitter anger against Jayavant and Appaji. 
Worst of all for the boy were the tears and reproaches 
of his own mother, when they went back into their own 
rooms. It was indeed a terrible ordeal for a boy who 
loved his home and people as Jayavant did. 

The nights were warm, and the men and boys slept 




A Maratha trooper from Appaji's country fording a stream 
in the Mesopotamian campaigu-and incidenta ly furnislnng trans- 
port for a kid while its mother looks on with grave concern. 



A VILLAGE WRESTLER 69 

in the open courtyard of the house. Before they went 
to sleep, Appaji said in quick, low tones, ^^My boy, your 
Uncle Balavant and your grandmother are very an- 
gry. They may try to kidnap you or even poison you. 
Before daylight you must be gone. And do not stay 
in Chinchore. Tell the sahib to send you away some- 
where for a time, until their anger grows cold." Long 
before dawn, accordingly, Jayavant was on his way back 
to Chinchore, with a hearty Godspeed from his father^ 
Appaji. 

Again excitement reigned when the family awoke 
next day and found Jayavant gone. It was soon ar- 
ranged that the uncles should follow and demand the 
boy from the missionary sahib. ^'Thou shalt come with 
us, too, Appaji, and shalt assent to our demand," said 
Balavantrao. Much to Appaji's disgust, Balavantrao 
also invited Vishvanath, the village Brahman. But 
when they arrived in Chinchore, they did not find Jay- 
avant there, and no amount of angry demands from the 
uncles could discover where he had gone. 

Easter Sunday came and went. Appaji's thoughts 
were far away, wondering about his son, where he was, 
whether he had taken the final irrevocable step, and, 
most of all, whether he too should not take his stand be- 
side his plucky boy. Some days later, Gangaramji 
handed Appaji a letter. He could scarcely wait to open 
it. Jayavant wrote that he had arrived in Chinchore 
just in time to be sent on with a bullock cart to Ahmed- 
nagar and thence to Satara, where on Easter Sunday 
he had been baptised. He hoped and prayed that his 
father and the rest might some day share the happiness 
of this experience. He wanted to return to school at 



70 INDIA OI7 THE MARCH 

Chincliore soon and hoped tliat his father would come 
to see him there. He sent loving greetings to his mother 
and sister. 

After some thought, Appaji decided to tell the news 
at once to all the household, and he did so. Again there 
was an uproar. Again the grandmother in an abandon 
of despair swore that she would take her life. Bala- 
vantrao, being an orthodox Hindu, went at once to 
Vishvanath, the Brahman, with the tale, and that eve- 
ning a crowd of villagers, some angry, some grave, and 
3ome merely curious, gathered at the village square to 
talk over this untoward event. Appaji quietly joined 
the group. He listened with the rest to the Brahman's 
bitter attack on himself and Jayavant, on the Satya 
Shodak Samaj, the liberal society to which the Brahman 
with reason blamed this occurrence, on Gangaramji, and 
on the Christian school. Two or three of the older vil- 
lagers followed in similar vein. 

Then Appaji himself rose and looked about the circle 
of faces. ^'Chintaman Patil, there is something that I 
would say about this." 

"Say on," said Chintaman. 

"Twice before have I been before you here," said 
Appaji. "Once, when I had won the wrestling match 
and ye did me honor, and once when I returned from 
the War and ye did me even higher honor. I won the 
wrestling match for the honor of our village and as an 
example for all our young men. I went to the War for 
the sake of our old Maratha glory and for the good of 
our Motherland. ITow listen to me. ISTever did we 
need God's help more than we need it now. The SirJcar 
has given us home rule. Soon we shall have to elect 



A VILLAGE WRESTLER 'Tl 

those who are to rule over us. Where shall we find 
men who will hold even the balance between friend and 
foe and who will serve our common good ?" He paused 
and a murmur went about the circle, for the spirit of 
public service was well-nigh unknown. "Has our re- 
ligion prepared us for this? Will Vishvanath and his 
mantras help us ? 'No. But the religion of Christ will 
help us. He teaches men to think of others. I know 
that his religion is true. When I was wounded, men 
came to take me to the hospital, risking their lives for 
my sake. They bore upon their clothes the symbol of 
Christ's cross. And when I was in the hospital, a white 
nurse served me night and day, caring for me like a 
sister. She too wore on her arm a red cross. I have 
thought about this, and I have decided that I will join 
my boy Jayavant and that I too will become a Chris- 
tian." 

These were bold words for Appaji to say before Vish- 
vanath. So bold, that they left his hearers speechless. 
Some shook their heads, but there were several of the 
younger men whose faces showed their approval. After 
a time one of them spoke. 

"Appaji, thou art right. Thou hast ever been the 
best leader of our village. I have listened to the Chin- 
chore sahib's talk, and it is true. Some day all of us 
will be Christians." 

"Yes," answered Appaji, "and that day is not far 
distant. Already in South India thousands of men of 
caste like ours in several districts have become Chris- 
tians. Here the Satya Shodak Samaj grows stronger 
every year. Soon ye too shall come to see that Christ 
is the hope of our Motherland." 



72 INDIA ON THE MABCH 

Then the meeting broke up, some holding with Vish- 
vanath, but many openly siding with Appaji. 

IText morning, under Vishvanath's influence, a few 
of the pupils did not go to the Christian school. Most 
of the parents, however, refused to be moved by his 
threats and arguments and continued to send their chil- 
dren. 

Appaji went to Chinchore. He easily satisfied Mr. 
Greyson that he was ready to take a Christian stand, 
and when Jayavant came back from Satara, the simple 
baptismal ceremony was performed. 

That was the critical step which meant a final break 
with all, except Jayavant, who had meant most to him. 
From now on he was, in the eyes of his family, an out- 
caste. He could no longer live in his own home, and 
for a time he sought and found employment at Chin- 
chore. Sitabai refused to see her husband or let little 
Tara see him. He took every opportunity to send them 
messages, but he received no reply. Many a hard fight 
against lonesomeness and longing for home and village 
did Jayavant and he fight together. But after many 
months, the glad word came from Sitabai that she 
could bear the separation no longer and would come to 
live with him. Arrangements were quickly made, and 
Sitabai and Tara came to Chinchore. 

At first she tried to observe the rules of caste, but 
the Christian influences about her were too strong and 
finally both she and Tara joined the church. The fam- 
ily reunion was complete, and joy again crowned their 
humble home. 

'No one can measure the influence of the example of 
Appaji and Jayavant in their own village and in all the 



A VILLAGE WEESTLER YS 

region. Many Maratha boys are crowding tlie village 
schools and several have gone to the boarding-school. 
Some of them believe in Christ and intend openly to 
follow Jayavant's example by being baptised. The 
strength of the Satya Shodak Samaj and other agencies 
of reform among the middle classes grows. More and 
more of the slow-moving but substantial farmers, who 
form the backbone of India's life, are saying openly 
that they will all some day become Christians. When 
will that day come? Who can say? Appaji and Jaya- 
vant will tell you, if you ask them, that a great move- 
ment among the Marathas is near at hand. They are 
praying and working for it. Who knows but that they 
may be the very ones who are to play a leading part in 
the winning of the middle-class millions of India? 



,But for these missionaries, these humble orders of 
Hindu society will for ever remain unraised. ... To the 
Christian missionaries belongs the credit of having gone 
to their humble homes, and awakened them to a sense of 
a better earthly existence. This action of the missionary 
was not a mere improvement upon ancient history, a 
kind of polishing and refining of an existing model, but 
an entirely original idea, conceived and carried out with 
commendable zeal, and oftentimes in the teeth of oppo- 
sition and persecution . . . the heroism of raising the 
low from the slough of degradation and debasement was 
an element of civilization unknown to ancient India. 
— An Eminent Brahman Official in the Travancore Cen- 
sus of 1901 



IV 

Out o£ the Mire 

We have come on our bicycles through the narrow, 
winding street of a little Indian village and are passing 
out through the large iron-bound gate in the village 
wall, when we hear sounds of quarreling. 

''ArSj Rama ! Get out of my way ! Your fpther was 
a donkey and your ancestors were pigs ! Get out of my 
way, I say !" More and still more abuse pours in loud 
tones from the mouth of an old woman. She is one of 
a crowd of Indian ^^outcastes" gathered in an open space 
between the village proper and the group of tumble- 
down huts which make up the outcaste quarter. They 
are unkempt, and their scanty clothing is, for the most 
part, ragged and filthy, l^ow they are pushing each 
other angrily. 

As the circle opens for a moment, one can see what 
it is all about. There on the ground is the bloody car- 
cass of a dead bullock. Its hide has been stripped off 
and taken away as a precious prize. Those nearest are 
trying to hack off pieces of meat. They are spotted with 
blood. When those of the outer group try to come up 
to get their share, they are roughly pushed back by 
those who are nearer. 

A fourteen-year-old boy breaks from the group and 
runs toward his house with a great strip of meat. He 
wears a dirty little cloth about his loins, — nothing more. 
His body is covered with dirt, and there are sores upon 
his legs and head. 

A few in the group are muscular. The majority are 

75- 



76 INDIA 01^ THE MAECH 

thin and weak. They are ''Mahars" by caste, the scav- 
engers of the village, and the prize over v^^hich they 
are quarreling is the flesh of a bullock that had fallen 
dead in the village that morning. 

A fine looking village headman walks by with averted 
face in which one can clearly read his dislike of the 
scene. To him, as to all Hindus of good caste, the bul- 
lock is a sacred animal. He loathes the thought of eat- 
ing its meat, and as for touching the flesh of an animal 
that has died of disease, it is utterly disgusting to him — 
just as it is to us. 

A boy from the outer group sees us and comes running 
up to appeal for our support. ^'Eama and his brothers 
will not let our party have any of the meat. They 
claim it all. Bali to han pili/' ^ 

"Is it their turn to do the village work ?" we ask. 

"Yes," he replies ; "but always when it is our turn, 
we have allowed their party to have some of the meat. 
That has been the custom of our village." 

By this time Eama and the rest have seen us. They 
all know us as the missionaries who are the special 
friends of their village and in charge of its little Chris- 
tian school. Probably from a sense of shame, the quar- 
rel subsides. Some come up to say salaam to the sahibs, 
while others remain at work about the carcass. 

It is a typical scene in an outcaste quarter of an 
Indian village. Picture to yourself 53,000,000 people 
sentenced by society to live lives like this. Outside of 
each village are the outcaste quarters where such people 
exist in little dark mud huts. There may be several 

1 A native saying, meaning, "The strong man twists others' 
ears." 



OUT OF THE MIEE 77 

outcaste groups living in separate quarters near the 
same village. It is one of the most pathetic aspects of 
their life that each panchama, or outcaste, group keeps 
aloof from every other. Those among them who regard 
themselves as higher despise the lovt^er, just as the high- 
caste man despises them all. The Mahars despise and 
hate the Mangs, who are their fellow-outcastes. In the 
same way the Malas of South India will have nothing to 
do with their neighbors, the Madigas. So the whole 
vicious system of dislike and contempt goes on. 

The Mahars are better off than many other similar 
groups, but I have introduced you to them because they 
are the outcastes whom I know best. They clean the 
village of dead animals and other refuse, and eat the 
meat. They are, in general, the village servants and 
messengers. At all times a certain number of them 
are on duty in the village to do anything that the head- 
man may ask. Like other outcastes, their moral stand- 
ards are low, and they have no strong principles against 
cheating and stealing. Yet they will carry hundreds 
of rupees of village money to the treasury of the dis- 
trict and never dream of touching any of it. That is 
part of their caste morality. If they could not be trusted 
with money, they would lose their job as village servants. 

In return for their services to the village, the Mahars 
of each village receive a poor piece of land called hadola, 
or the place of bones, because here they are sup- 
posed to deposit the bones of the village animals. They 
also have the right to beg from door to door in the vil- 
lage during the time when it is their turn to do the 
village service. Jingle-jangle go the iron chains on 
the end of the Mahar's stick as he waits in front of a 



T8 II^DIA OlS" THE MAECH 

€aste man's door. He dare not knock or shout ; lie must 
simply jangle his stick. ^'Who's there?" shouts the 
farmer. "Maruti Mahar/' answers the outcaste. The 
farmer's lip curls. "Here, throw him this," he says, and 
gives his wife a broken piece of bread. Or, if he likes 
Maruti, he may send him out a measure of uncooked 
grain. Poor wages, yet no Mahar will surrender his 
right to take a turn at the village service or his claim 
on the hadola land. These things are all he has. If 
you ask him about it, he may answer with a shrug and 
a native saying, '^Anterun pangarun paJiun pai pasarale 
paliijef meaning, "One must pay attention to the size 
of his blanket in stretching out his legs." Without his 
^^rights" he would have no position in society at all ; so 
he clings to his beggar privileges and is even ready to 
fight for them. 

Each of the panchama castes has its ovni peculiar 
position in society, its moral standards, its own duties. 
Some are rope makers, others are leather workers. Many 
of them have little other occupation than that of farm 
laborers, and some are almost slaves of the caste men 
who own the farms on which they work. They all eat 
meat, — most of them the meat of the sacred cow, and 
many of them the carrion flesh of dead animals. This 
is what pollutes them most in the eyes of high-caste 
Hindus. 

A few individuals among them have become mod- 
erately prosperous as farmers or traders. Others have 
gone off to the city to work in the mills and in various 
sorts of "coolie" labor, living for the most part in the 
city slums. But the great majority remain in the 
country, clinging to the fringe of the village. In times 



OUT OF THE MIKE Y9 

of good harvest they may have enough for a meager 
living, adding now and then to their regular food a 
gruesome feast on the cattle that die in the village. 
When things go v^ell with them, it is truly wonderful 
to see how quickly they forget their privations. They 
love a wedding feast, and at such a celebration often 
show that they have not forgotten how to joke and laugh. 
But what can they do when the rain fails and famine 
comes? They are naturally the ones who suffer first 
and most, A missionary from South India wrote that 
he had ^'seen a man come home late at night to a family 
of 'Kve persons with a smile of triumph at his success, 
and all he had brought in a filthy pot as his day's wages 
was a mess of millet gruel about equivalent to the 
porridge which two English children take for break- 
fast, and this was the sole nourishment of five persons 
for that twentv-four hours. The householder next door 

t/ 

had failed altogether, and he and his family had gone 
hungry to bed after drinking a little salt and water at 
food time." ^ 

How does it happen that one-sixth of all India's 
people have for thousands of years been living in such 
a way as this ? The answer seems to be in one Indian 
word varna^ which, in this use, means classes based on 
color — "color prejudice." Two great waves of invasion 
swept down over India from the north, — first, the brown 
Dravidians, then, the white Aryans. They found al- 
ready settled in the land tribes of darker people of a 
low civilization. Some of these moved farther south. 
Others were driven into the mountains and forests, 
where they became the ancestors of the wild hill tribes 

2 Godfrey Phillips, The Outcastes^ Hope, p. 10. 



80 IITDIA ON THE MARCH 

and hunter people. Still others the conquerors made 
into serfs, and these became the village ontcastes. The 
customs of these serfs were repulsive to the conquerors. 
Partly in self-protection, partly in contempt, they re- 
fused to let them live in their villages. They would 
neither eat with them nor have any social intercourse 
with them. 

I have been in a village in which the villagers had 
just made a barricade of thorns to prevent Mahars from 
defiling one of the streets of the village by walking in 
it. In some parts of India the outcastes must get out 
of the road when a high-class man comes anywhere near, 
in order that they may not pollute the air he breathes. 
The outcaste may not study with the caste child in 
school. Perhaps he is allowed to sit on the veranda and 
to get what instruction the teacher deigns to give him 
there. The outcaste may not use the village well. Some- 
times his wife and children have to go two miles to 
draw and carry home every drop of water used. Do 
you wonder that they are often dirty ? ISTo outcaste is 
ever allowed inside the Hindu temple. He would be 
murdered if he tried to go in. So he builds his own 
little shrine outside the village or simply puts a rock 
up on end, smears it with red paint and worships that. 
Pear of demons, goblins, and the mysterious powers 
about him is the principal element in his religion. He 
often tries to win the favor of these powers by strange 
sacrifices and self-torture. 

Until Christianity came, India had not dreamed of 
any better life for the outcastes. ^^As soon may a black 
puppy be changed to a white one as a barber become a 
Brahman." So writes a popular Indian author. Manu, 



OUT OF THE MIEE 81 

the great Hindu lawgiver, speaking of certain outcastes, 
lays down the following rule: ^'The abode of a Chan- 
dala and a Swapaca must be out of the town; they 
must not have the use of entire vessels ; their sole wealth 
must be dogs and asses. Their clothes must be the 
mantles of the deceased ; their dishes for food, broken 
pots ; their ornaments, rusty iron ; continually must they 
roam from place to place. Let no man who regards his 
duty, religious and civil, hoid any intercourse with 
them, let their transactions be confined to themselves, 
and their marriages be only between equals." Hindu- 
ism taught that outcastes were suffering in their present 
life the just penalty of sins committed in some previous 
existence. Thus it was religion itself which forged the 
shackles and riveted them on the outcaste. Does it not 
seem almost impossible to think of any religion teaching 
such things ? It is only human to try to help those 
who are weak and poor. Yet v/ith the high-caste 
Hindu, it came to be part of his religious duty to keep 
the outcaste down. 

The pitiful fact is that even the outcastes themselves 
have generally accepted their lot as part of the divine 
order. A few of them have won their way to fame as 
poets and religious leaders, but only a very few. Until 
recently almost none of them have tried to rise or have 
thought that they could rise. Have you ever seen a 
group of prisoners with their striped prison suits and 
their dull, lifeless faces ? India's outcastes are not 
bound by steel handcuffs or chains, but they go 
about with the hopeless look of prisoners. For per- 
haps two thousand years their ancestors have been out- 
castes. Meet one of them anywhere and ask him, '^Who 



82 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

are you ?'' He will look up sometimes with callous in- 
difference, sometimes with apology and shame, and say, 
"I am a Mahar," or, "I am a Mang." That is all he 
thinks you would care to know. He does not tell you 
his name. He is just one of that group, like the pris- 
oner who is known by his prison number. 

"Don't you want to be clean ?" asked a missionary 
of a filthy pariah woman. "Why should I want to be 
clean? I am a pariah," was the frank reply. I have 
seen a high-caste girl of twelve in the city street scream- 
ing filthy abuse in shrill, angry tones at an outcaste girl 
of her own age. She picked up mud from the dirty 
street and threw it at the sweeper child, who made no 
reply but ran away, a look of fear and utter hopelessness 
on her face that I shall never forget. Which of these 
girls do you pity more — the one doomed to be always an 
outcaste, or the one whose religion made it natural for 
her to treat another little girl of her own age in such 
a way ? Try to think of a rural village in North Amer- 
ica in which the farm hands may not live with the 
farmers or drink from their well, but every night must 
go to a little huddled slum clearly separated from the 
rest of the village. Off in still another quarter are the 
cobblers and shoe dealers and butchers. Their children 
may not follow any other trade than that of their par- 
ents. They too must live out their lives in the same 
huts. Despised outcastes from birth ! Can you imag- 
ine it ? 

It is one of the wonderfully oeautiful things about a 
true Christian that he always tries to help the poorest 
and the lowest. Paul won most of his converts from 
among the slaves and lower classes of the Roman Em- 



OUT OF THE MIRE 83 

pire. ^Tor behold your calling, brethren," be writes 
to the Christians of Corinth, ''that not many wise after 
the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called : 
but God chose the foolish things of the world, that ho 
might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose 
the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame 
the things that are strong; and the base things of the 
world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, 
yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to 
nought the things that are." 

Christian missionaries would have been false to their 
Master if they had not gone to the outcastes. One of 
the greatest mission stations in India began by the win- 
ning of a few miserable outcaste beggars living in a poor- 
house. Everywhere it has been from these classes that 
most of the Christian converts have come. 

Do you wonder that many of them turned to a re- 
ligion which recognizes them as real men and women 
rather than as little better than slaves, especially when 
the missionaries not only talked about God's love, but 
also made the message vital by starting hospitals, es- 
tablishing schools, working to secure for the outcaste 
some of his rights as a man, and by a thousand expres- 
sions of Christian friendliness ? 

Yet modern missions had been in India for sixty 
years before any large number of the outcastes caught 
the meaning of Christianity for them. It was the 
famine of 1876-79 in South India that led them to come 
into the Church by whole groups and in large numbers. 
That was a terrible famine. People died by the mil- 
lions. The missionaries threw themselves into relief 
work. During the famine, they did not baptize any con- 



84 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

verts. All they could tliink of was to try to save the 
lives of those who were starving. *But all the time, they 
were preaching better sermons than words could express. 
^'These missionariesj although they are white people, 
care for us.'' That was the first and most surprising 
thought to a people used to nothing but contempt from 
the upper classes. '^They tell us that their God cares 
for us too. They are ready to start schools for our 
children. Shall we not become Christians?" 

So they talk it over among themselves. Some urge 
the step. Others cling to their old worship. After a 
while a part go to the missionary and say that they 
want to become Christians. He welcomes the group 
and asks them whether they are ready to give up en- 
tirely their idols and worship the one God who is their 
heavenly Father. 

^^Yes, Excellency. The Hindus keep us out of their 
temples. Our own gods have done us no good. We 
will give them up." 

"And will you go to church regularly and learn how 
to worshi]3 and live in the Christian way V 

"Yes, Excellency." 

"And will you give up immoral living, stealing, and 
the eating of the flesh of dead animals ?" 

Probably they have known beforehand that these ques- 
tions would be asked and have already made up their 
minds. 

"Yes, Excellency. Send us a Christian teacher, and 
we will try to do all these things." 

"And will you send your children to school ?" 

"Yes, we will." 




_, K Ol O 

'^ ^ ^ fl 

5h^ 



OUT OF THE MIKE 85 

So the Christian teaclier is sent, and they are en- 
rolled as inquirers. The missionary comes to their 
village as often as he can to encourage them in their 
purpose. After some months, if they keep their prom- 
ise and show signs of true Christian character, they are 
haptized. 

It was something like this that happened in South 
India after the famine days about forty years ago, and 
from that day to this ^^mass movements" have been go- 
ing on in different parts of India all the time. Over 
two hundred thousand have become Christians in the 
Telugu country to the south. Far north in the Punjab 
the outcastes of whole regions have been baptized. Prob- 
ably not far from a million outcastes have become Chris- 
tians in the last ten years. 

In many parts of India the numbers who now desire 
to become Christians are overwhelming. They are far 
greater than the missionaries or Indian Christian lead- 
ers can handle. I went with Pastor Samuel through 
the villages of his parish in the Madura District. Every- 
where eager groups came out to speak with him. 

^'You have many inquirers in your parish,'' I said. 

He looked up quickly and answered, ^^I could baptize 
a thousand this year if I had money enough to send them 
a few teachers." He could find the teachers, but he 
did not have the money for their salaries — only sixty to 
eighty dollars a year each. Bishop Pred B. Pisher of 
the American Methodist Episcopal Church in his inter- 
esting book, India's Silent Revolution, tells of being at 
a conference where 91,000 people who wanted to become 
Christians had to be refused because there were no 



86 Il^DIA ON THE MARCH 

teachers to send. With a larger force of missionaries 
and Indian pastors and teachers probably ten million 
would commit themselves to the Christian life in the 
next thirty years. 

In some of the mass movement areas no person is 
now received into the Church nntil his entire village 
group is ready to come with him. ^'Go back and win 
your village and then come to me/' is what the mission- 
ary says to the inquirer. To have all come at once 
lessens persecution and gives the community greater 
strength to meet it. The caste system has made it nat- 
ural to treat the outcastes in masses. That is the way 
the caste men treat them. They themselves naturally 
think that way and act that way. It is only after they 
become Christian that many of them show strong indi- 
vidual character. . 

One of the most interesting ways of solving the prob- 
lem of getting Christian leaders for the mass movement 
has been the training of the headmen of the outcaste 
communities in short courses — the ^'Plattsburgs" of the 
Christian campaign. The missionaries invite anywhere 
from twentj'^-five to two hundred of these headmen for 
a course lasting two or three weeks. Bishop Fisher de- 
scribes such a course: '^A popular method is learning 
hymns. The Indian Christian hymn is no dilettante 
matter. It is frequently two hours long and sometimes 
covers Christ's birth, death, and resurrection, winding 
up with a long series of observations on what sort of 
life a Christian should lead." ^ At the end of the 
course, the headmen go back to teach their communities 
what they have learned. 

^India's Silent Revolution, Fislier, p. 98. 



OUT OF THE MIRE 87 

Have I made it look like an easy and simple thing 
for outcastes to become Christians ? I hope not. Often 
it is far from easy. They have to make a break from 
their v^hole past. Frequently they have to suffer bitter 
persecution. The wonder is that they almost alv^ays 
stand firm under it. There is a bigoted village off in 
the far corner of the district in which I worked. Most 
of the outcastes in this village were baptized. The 
castemen then refused to employ them in the village 
work or in their fields. A little while afterwards a mob 
of caste villagers attacked them with sticks and left 
some of them half dead. The injured men were taken 
to a dispensary, but the castemen bribed the doctor not 
to make a true report. They also bribed the police ofii- 
cial to whitewash the case. A little later some castemen, 
in the dead of night, set fire to the thatch roofs of the 
huts of some of the outcastes, leaving them homeless as 
well as penniless and in daily fear of fresh attacks. 
But the outcastes did not renounce their Christian pro- 
fession, and I marvelled as T saw the way these ig- 
norant villagers stood firm. Finally the castemen of 
the village stopped their persecution and accepted the 
situation. 

But persecution like this is growing less. One of 
the most interesting results of the work of Christian 
missionaries in India has been its effect on the attitude 
of the best Indians toward the outcastes. The Arya 
Samaj, a powerfid and vigorous reform movement, is 
actually offering to put the outcastes through a cere- 
mony whereby they may become ''Touchables'' and rec- 
ognized members of the Hindu community. Lala Lajpat 
Eai, the best known leader of the Arya Samaj, frankly 



88 INDIA ON" THE MAECK 

acknowledges that educated Hindus are alarmed at the 
numbers of outcastes who are becoming Christian. He 
calls upon his countrymen to give up their prejudices 
and admit the outcaste. He says, ^'The Christian mis- 
sionary is gathering the harvest, and no blame can at- 
tach to him for doing so. He is in this country with 
the message of his God, and if the Hindus forsake their 
ovni people, he, in any case, will not fail them." 

The following is from a vivid description of the cere- 
mony whereby an outcaste group was actually ^^con- 
verted" to Hinduism by a member of the Arya Samaj. 
The account tells of the steps taken for the purification 
of the outcastes and of the assembly of the higher caste 
people to see the final ceremony. ^^After taking the 
vow of clean living and clean thinking, and pouring 
in his libation to the fire, the hour-before-human-shaped- 
soulless animal rises up at the command of the teacher, 
metamorphosed into a full-fledged human being, with a 
distinctly perceptible light of the soul shining in his 
features. The high-caste men of the village take candies 
offered by his hands, lead him to the village well, and 
permit him to draw water out of it. The body, with 
its newly possessed soul, quivers at the unexpected in- 
dulgence and hesitates for a moment ; but the fraternal 
encouragement of the whole village community gives 
him heart, and, led by the Guru^ he walks up the steps 
of the well and pulls the rope. His centuries-old dis- 
abilities are removed by this one act, his self-respect is 
restored to him, and his sense of humanity completed. 
Por though a Sudra still, he is no longer untouchable, 
his touch pollutes no more." How many have thus been 



OUT OF THE MIRE 89 

restored to Hindu respectability, as an indirect result 
of Christian missions, it is impossible to say. Probably 
it runs up to over 50,000. Liberal Hindus have started 
a ^'Mission to the Depressed Classes'' which sends its 
high-caste ^^missionaries" among these people. It is not 
too much to say that the work of the Christian mission- 
aries is rapidly raising the entire position of fifty-three 
million people. 

Yet the efforts of all non-Christian agencies are still 
feeble indeed compared to those of Christians. Others 
do not have the compelling motive which Christ gives. 
The Mission to the Depressed Classes, with all the 
praise it receives from rich and influential Hindus, is 
really a very small affair. ^'After all," said a leading 
^Nationalist, ^Vhen it comes to practise, Christianity 
alone is effecting what we I^ationalists are crying out 
for; namely, the elevation of the masses." 

Perhaps the very best work which the missionaries 
are doing to win the high-caste people of India to Christ 
is done when they are not working for them at all. It 
is done when the missionaries turn their backs on the 
quarters of the caste people and go into the little dirty 
panchama huts to raise the level of the life of the de- 
spised outcastes. This is the real Christian gospel, — 
an object lesson in Christian brotherhood. It is sham- 
ing and stimulating all India to higher ideals. 

An interesting fact about the winning of the out- 
castes is that in the very districts in which many out- 
castes have become Christian, the sturdy middle classes 
are now moving toward Christianity. ^'If you work for 
these pariahs, we will never become Christians," they 



90 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

said to the missionaries at first ; but now they are say- 
ing, ^'If your religion can do so much for these people, 
e'an it not help us too ?" 

What sort of Christians do these outcaste Indians 
make ? All sorts. Some are very crude and low. Some 
are among the noblest Christians to be found anywhere 
in the world. When we see what poor Christians many 
of us in ''Christian" America are, with fifteen hundred 
years of Christianity back of us, we shall not expect 
all of these people, who have been living in the mire, 
to become pure saints at once. They have set their 
faces toward the light. That is the important fact. 

The leading Christian of a large district in India is 
Vinayakrao Uzagare.* His father was an outcaste and 
became the first Christian in all that region. The father 
endured much persecution^ but in the end he won his 
own relatives by his patience and persistence. Vinaya- 
krao grew up in a Christian home and went to a Chris- 
tian school. He was a ''second generation Christian." 
They are the real test of what Christianity can do for 
the outcaste, because Christ has a chance at them from 
childhood. 

Vinayakrao was a large, athletic boy. He was so 
strong that he could never find another boy of his age 
powerful enough to be a real opponent. He loved to 
wander in the fields and mountains near his home and 
was not afraid of anything. His father gave him the 
best education he could — that of the Ahmednagar High 
School, and Vinayakrao took a position on the rail- 
road. Frank and open, with force of character that 

4 Vinayakrow Uzngare. 



OUT OF THE MIRE 91 

went well with his physical power, he had every promise 
of success in business. But he felt a call to go into 
Christian work. So he gave up his business prospects, 
studied in a theological seminary, and went out on a 
salary of seven dollars a month as the pastor of a little 
native church far from the city. 

There he threw himself into the service of his church 
and Christian school. He won such respect that a 
Brahman of the town was glad to teach in his school, 
and all classes in the town turned to him. British Gov- 
ernment officials noticed and praised his fearless fight 
against evil and his power for good. After a time he 
was put at the head of the Christian school system of 
the entire mission district. Then, by the general re- 
quest of his colleagues, he was made superintendent of 
Christian work for the district. He is now doing the 
work that a foreign missionary formerly did and is 
doing it in many ways better than a missionary ever 
could do it. 

Generous to a fault, he gives of his small income till 
he himself sometimes goes almost in rags. Brave, he 
will nurse a man who has the most fearful of Indian 
diseases, Asiatic cholera, or will take a stand that he 
feels is right against fiercest opposition. Yet he will 
labor with loving patience to try to win a man or to 
settle a quarrel. If the caste people of that region were 
to choose the man whom they would most trust to be 
their representative, I am convinced that they would 
choose none of the educated Brahmans and none of the 
village headmen, but this son of the outcaste quarter 
whom Christ has transformed. I am proud to count 



92 II^DIA ON THE MAECH 

him in the little inner circle of my intimate friends. 

Miracles ? You do not have to turn to the record of 
past ages to find them. Just come with me some day 
to the village of Kolgaon and meet this man who has 
a thousand years of degradation behind him. First go 
into the outcaste quarter in which his father was born. 
Then come and look into his face and talk with him of 
his people. You would come away, as I always come 
away from a talk with him, wondering at the Power 
that has molded from an outcaste such a nobleman of 
God and such an apostle of Christ. All over India 
you can find such men. Most of them will never be 
heard of beyond their own districts. It is they who 
are the backbone of the Christian campaign in India. 

There are other Christians of outcaste origin who 
are more brilliant and no less devoted than Yinayakrao. 
Among them are some who have won high position in 
law and medicine and who are now leading citizens of 
Indian cities, received as equals by Brahmans and 
Englishmen. One of the brilliant students of a great 
American university in recent years was such an In- 
dian. 'No American student could excel him in charm 
of manner, in instinctive refinement, or in Christian 
consecration. He earns all his expenses while in Amer- 
ica by lecturing on India, and he is so popular and suc- 
cessful that he was offered five thousand dollars a year 
if he would become a regular lecturer. But he has ded- 
icated his life to the service of his own country, and he 
is going back to work for India. 

When I think of India's outcastes, I am reminded of 
one of nature's greatest miracles. Out of the mold of 



OUT or THE MIKE 93 

vegetable matter, througli the pressure of the ages, she 
has formed the great coal beds on which our factories de- 
pend for power and our homes for heat. Then from this 
same material, by a process so long that we can only 
dimly imagine it, nature has fashioned diamonds. So, 
from the crude human material of the outcastes of In- 
dia, God is fashioning diamonds like Vinayakrao. And 
He calls us to be his partners in this great work. 



From tlie Marathi New Testament 

Luke 19:10 

The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which 
was lost. 



V 

Born To Be Robbers 

Tevak" ^ was excited. He had every reason to be, for 
he was out on his first real "expedition." He was a well- 
built, muscular boy of sixteen, a Piramalai Kallar ^ by 
caste. "Piramalai" means, "behind the mountain," and 
"Kallar" means, "robber." The Piramalai Kallars toot 
refuge centuries ago behind the E^aga-Malai or Snake 
Mountain in the Madura District in South India. 
Thence they have spread over a wide section of dry 
country where they till the rocky soil, which yields them 
only a scant living in good seasons. It is utterly in- 
adequate when the rains fail, and then ? Why, there are 
plenty of well-to-do merchants to be robbed. The Pira- 
malai Kallars scarcely need this incentive of necessity 
to crime, for robbery is the very spice of life to them. 

Think of being born into a family and into a com- 
munity where every male is expected to be a robber and 
where a good father will not consider giving an attrac- 
tive daughter to any young man who has not proved 
his worth by his skill and boldness in several dacoities, 
or stealing expeditions ! 

Had Tevan received any education ? Oh, yes. Prom 
early boyhood he had been taught by his father how to 
move about safely and noiselessly at night, how to place 
the deadly knife securely in his knotted hair where it 
would be ready for an emergency, how to tell lies suc- 
cessfully in case of need, and how to cover his tracks 
when he was pursued. This teaching had been rein- 

1 Tevun. 2 Pirumullai Kullar. 

95 



96 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

forced by many a tale of bold attack and thrilling es- 
cape told at the village rest-house, where the men gath- 
ered in the evening. Moreover, he had learned the 
simple traditions and practises of the primitive Indian 
farmer and had become skilled in bull baiting — the 
favorite sport of the Kallars. 

Had he learned to read and write? Of course not. 
How would that help him to steal or to plow? And 
did he know that stealing with possible murder was 
wrong ? How should he ? He had gone regularly with 
his family and fellow-villagers to worship the little 
black image of Kuruppan which stood on a platform 
under a tree. They asked Kuruppan's blessing when 
they started out on a dacoity, and they offered him their 
thanks when they returned successful. It was their 
god who gave them skill and cunning. He was the god 
of robbery. ^The official takes bribes, the merchant 
sands the sugar, but we choose a more open, courageous 
way of gathering the loot," is what his father might 
say if he were reproached for a robbery. But Tevan 
would have no such answer to make. He would simply 
be amazed if anyone should hint to him that stealing 
was wrong. ^^I am a Kallar," he would reply, and that 
would seem to him enough. To betray a comrade would 
be wrong, but to steal and lie and even, if necessary, 
to murder were his duty as a Kallar and would win 
him favor with God and man. 

And so, in the year of grace 1918, he was standing 
on tiptoe, waiting for the word to go forward into his 
first adventure. It was a big adventure, and that he 
had been chosen was an indication of how promising a 
pupil he was. This was not an affair of cattle stealing 



BORIST TO BE EOBBEES 97 

or even of breaking into a native merclaant's house. 
They were planning no less than to rob a certain un- 
popular English officer, Robertson Thurai (Honorable 
Mr. Eobertson), who was on a tour of the district and 
was making his temporary headquarters in a traveler's 
bungalow thirty miles from Tevan's village. 

For one thing, Robertson Thurai had refused to pay 
five rupees a month to a Kallar "watchman" for his 
house. These watchmen do not watch. They merely 
come around once a month for their pay ; but it is un- 
derstood that no Kallar will rob a house whose owner 
pays tribute. Robertson Thurai had not only refused 
to pay, but had sworn roundly at the Kallar who came 
to offer this service and had driven him away from his 
bungalow. Tht^ Kallars had other things against Rob- 
ertson Thurai. He had made a court decision that bore 
heavily on some of them. So this robbery had a double 
motive. They were seeking both booty and revenge. 

There were eight Kallars in the party, and they had 
tramped the thirty miles that day. !N^ow it was two 
o'clock in the morning, and they all stood barefooted, 
their dark brown bodies naked save for a loin cloth and 
greased so that they might easily wriggle out of any- 
one's gTasp. The word to start was given. Tevan's 
father, Vellian, laid his hand on his son's shoulder as 
a last token of warning and encouragement. Then, 
silently, they slipped into the compound of the trav- 
eler's bungalow where Robertson Thurai was staying, 
and past the sleeping servants on the veranda. 

Inside, they paused long enough to allow their eyes 
to become used to the darkness. They could tell where 
the Thurai's bed lay by the noise of heavy breathing. 



98 INDIA O^ THE MARCH 

Tevan and one other had been assigned to that comer. 
The other carried a heavy stick and stood over the 
sleeper, ready to clnb him into unconsciousness if he 
woke np during the operation. Tevan slipped between 
the bed and the wall, where he felt cautiously in the 
corner. His hand struck the cold, smooth surface of 
a gun-barrel placed near at hand by the English officer 
for his protection. He raised the deadly weapon quickly 
and crept noiselessly out, stopping only to grasp a ser- 
vant's bundle which his foot stumbled against near the 
door. He was the first back at the rendezvous; soon 
two more came, stooping under the weight of a heavy 
trunk which they had carried out of the sleeping-room 
so silently that no one was disturbed. 

When all had returned, a, formidable amount of loot 
lay piled before them, including a large steel dispatch 
box which probably contained money. They had the 
Thurai's watch and pocketbook as well. 

"Kuruppan has blessed us," said the leader. "Let 
us hurry away before the alarm is given." So without 
waiting to return for a second haul, they started. Earlier 
in the night they had "borrowed" a cart and a pair of 
bullocks, and long before daybreak they were on their 
way to their village, most of the party sleeping in 
various positions of discomfort in the crude two-wheeled 
cart, while the leader drove the bullocks, keeping a sharp 
lookout for danger. 

^NTow it was unfortunate for the success of Tevan's 
first expedition that this particular Englishman hap- 
pened to be having a poor night. It was not long after 
the robbers had started, before Robertson Thurai woke 
up and flashed his night light to see what time it was. 



BOEIT TO BE ROBBERS 99 

He was wide awake at once wlieii tie realized that his 
watch was gone from the table. He climbed out from 
under the large mosquito net which covered his bed and 
quickly took in his losses — the rifle, the trunk, and, 
most of all, the dispatch case which, it happened, con- 
tained important documents. With a few strides he 
was out and shaking the sleeping watchman with no 
gentle hand. ^'Get up P' he said. 

'^Oh — oh. Excellency, I have not been asleep, but 
was just resting,'' lied the scared man, holding up an 
arm to protect himself from the expected blow. In a 
moment the compound was alive with activity, and in 
another moment Mr. Robertson was dressed and striding 
to the shed where his car lay. A few minutes later, and 
he was out on the road. 

The second unlucky circumstance of that night for 
the Kallars was the fact that the police superintendent 
of the Madura District was camping only fifteen 
miles away from Mr. Robertson in a village on the same 
macadamized road, and it was scarcely more than half 
an hour before he too was jumping from his bed, aroused 
by Mr. Eobertson's call. Soon two automobiles, each 
with an English sahib at the wheel, and with four Indian 
policemen crowded in, were tearing back over the road. 
It took the police sahib only a short time to recognize 
the work of the Piramalai Kallars, and his plan of cam- 
paign was formed at once. One automobile load was to 
go ahead as far as the roads would carry them toward the 
Snake Mountain country; then they were to spread out 
and watch the most likely roads and paths. The police 
superintendent borrowed horses from the robbed official 
for himself and his posse and, following the rough cart 



100 IN'DIA OIT THE MARCH 

tracks in preference to the main road, galloped after 
the escaping robbers. 

At about ten o'clock in tbe morning, Tevan was en- 
gaged in the occupation which is the delight of every 
Indian boy. He was driving the bullock cart, sitting- 
cross-legged on the base of the tongue of the cart, shout- 
ing abuse at the lazy, red bullock, uttering indescribable 
clicks and guttural shouts at the black and tan one, 
and occasionally leaning forward to start up the tired 
animals by twisting their tails. In the cart the trunk 
no longer appeared. It had been forced open, and its 
contents, together with the rest of the loot, had been dis- 
tributed among the band. The dispatch case too had 
been broken open and the money removed. Trunk and 
dispatch case had then been dumped into a convenient 
clump of bushes beside the road. 

Suddenly every drowsing Kallar in the cart was wide 
awake. Around a bend in the cart track behind them 
trotted two horsemen in khaki, one of them an English- 
man. They were both clearly policemen, and at once 
the Kallars realized that they were on their trail. To 
stay in the cart was to court certain arrest. So, each 
one grabbing his loot, they scattered. The horsemen 
spurre/i their horses to a gallop and were upon the cart 
before Tevan, whose attention to the bullocks had been 
so absorbing as to prevent his catching the first warning 
of danger, could get away. The boy had not run a hun- 
dred paces when the police sahib was upon him, and he 
found himself looking into the muzzle of a revolver. He 
was handcuffed and tied to a tree by the folds of his 
own turban. The two policemen then galloped after the 
other escaping robbers. Soon one more was brought in, 




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BORN TO BE ROBBERS 101 

and Tevan saw with dismay that it was his own father, 
who had lingered in the hope of being able to help him. 

Tevan and his father, knowing that further conceal- 
ment was both impossible and undesirable, told their 
names and village. The English superintendent started 
at once for the village, while the Indian policeman rode 
beside the cart in which sat Tevan and his father, both 
securely handcuffed. A man from a near-by village was 
impressed for the service of driving the cart. 

The dispatch case and trunk were recovered, and 
Tevan and his father were duly locked up. But the 
superintendent had taken a liking to the athletic robber 
boy, with his open face and keen look. He was given 
a light sentence as a first offender, and the superin- 
tendent had a special little talk with him before he 
went to prison. 

"Do you not see how foolish it is to steal V^ he said. 
"Even if you had escaped this time, you would have been 
caught and sent to jail some day before long. Who will 
now till your field and get bread for your mother and 
the family?" 

"God alone knows," answered Tevan. 

"The Sirkar (Government) does not want to keep 
you in jail," continued the kindly official. "It wants 
to teach your people better ways of earning their living. 
We are ready to give lands and schools and to help your 
people in every way. While you are here in prison, 
you will have a chance to learn to read and write. You 
will also be taught some trade. I shall keep my eye 
on you. If you do well, I will see that you are given 
a scholarship in a boarding-school and are trained to be 
a leader of your people." 



102 INDIA OK THE MARCH 

Tevan saw both the truth and the kindness of the 
superintendent's attitude. It was the latter that utterly 
surprised him and won him. He had always looked 
upon all police officials as his natural enemies and the 
enemies of his people. ^'Salaam, Thurai/' was all the 
boy replied, but in his tone, the big Englishman rightly 
read his intention to try. Erank and open himself, 
Tevan accepted without suspicion the direct words of 
the Englishman, and set about to make the best use of 
his two years "in school," as his people jokingly spoke 
of it. He threw himself into all the activities of the 
place and by his cheery way soon became popular with 
most of the wardens as well as with his fellow-prisoners. 

True to his word, the police superintendent kept his 
eye on Tevan. His greatest problem was to deal with 
the inherited tendency to crime of many of the 200,000 
Kallars of the Madura District. He was one of the 
leaders in the Government project for solving this prob- 
lem by education and by offering the Kallars a new 
chance. He liked these sturdy, sport-loving, fearless 
people, and Tevan seemed to him to promise to become 
one of the best of his type. He was glad, therefore, at 
the end of the term, that the boy had done so well that 
he could renew his offer of a scholarship in a boarding- 
school. 

When Tevan was released, he went straight to his 
village and home. Things had not gone well with his 
family. During the first winter his little sister had 
died of malnutrition. 'Now, however, the crops were 
good, and an uncle recently released from prison was 
caring for the family. Greatly to his surprise, Tevan's 
mother favored his going away to school. "What good 



BOKN TO BE KOBBEES 103 

for you to stay here? Soon you will again be in jail, 
and we will be left helpless. Go and study and come 
back to start a school for our village, so that our boys 
may learn something better than robbery — and living 
in prison." After a short visit at home, Tevan went 
to make use of his scholarship in the Training School 
at Pasumalai. 

There he was surprised to find a score more of boys 
of his own caste, all sent as Government scholars with 
the hope that they would go back as teachers and leaders 
of their people. He was even more surprised one day 
to meet a fine Kallar who had become a Christian 
preacher and to learn that already many of his people 
had become Christians. He had heard of Christian 
Kallars before, but there were none in his village or 
among his relatives, and he had never thought about 
the matter. 

In course of time the influence of the daily Bible 
lessons and the worship in the Pasumalai school brought 
their natural results, and Tevan decided to make the 
great break from his past traditions and training and 
become a Christian. 

With the same zest that he formerly found in 
thoughts of a dacoity, Tevan is now looking forward 
to the gi^eat adventure of winning his people to a higher 
life. ISTo less courage or patience or ingenuity or skill 
will be needed for his new enterprise. He is one of a 
little group which proposes to conquer the prejudices 
and to change the habits and beliefs of a whole people. 
To many this seems a ridiculous and impossible task, 
but not to Tevan. He is going back to open a school 
in his own village. He intends to have a playground 



104 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

and to start competitive sports. He wants to help the 
poorer Kallars to find farms on some of the public 
lands which the Government is ready to give for the 
purpose. Lately the Government is succeeding in get- 
ting pancliayets, or village committees of Kallars, to 
be responsible for ending crime and helping education. 
The final solution of the problem of these attractive 
and , promising robbers is not going to be easy, but the 
way seems clear. Seventy-five new schools have re- 
cently been started for Piramalai Kallars. Forty-one 
of their boys have been placed in boarding-schools. 
Over a thousand of them are already Christians. They 
were at first distrusted and persecuted by other Chris- 
tians, but now they are held in high respect. There 
is every prospect that many more will join the church 
soon. The Indian Church needs their courage and 
their strength. The Government and the mission can 
count on Tevan's help in all their plans for his people. 
He will do everything in his power to see that they 
are won to whole-hearted discipleship to Christ. 

There are many criminal castes like the Kallars. 
They are found in all parts of India. They differ 
greatly among themselves in language, in race, in 
methods of life, and in work. Some are bold robbers. 
Others confine themselves to picking people's pockets 
in the streets. Some specialize in stealing cattle. 
Others make and pass counterfeit coins, but consider 
thieving wrong. Some steal by day, but not by night. 
Others work only at night. Many of these criminal 
tribes are wandering gypsy people, going from place 
to place, telling fortunes, dancing, working as black- 



BORIS' TO BE ROBBEKS 105 

smiths or farm laborers, or in other ways, but always 
with an eye out for a chance to steal. There are as 
many as five million who are classed as belonging to 
criminal tribes in India. All teach their children their 
own particular skill, all pray to some deity like 
Kuruppan whom they think of as helping in their 
crime. 

Gopal is a twelve-year-old "graduate" of the regular 
school for thieves run by the criminal tribe of 
Sanaurhia of ISTorth India. He has skilfully stolen 
hundreds of rupees' worth of Oriental cloths from the 
shelves of rich merchants, while his gang diverted atten- 
tion by a violent quarrel in the street in front of the 
shop. But some day the merchant will be too watchful, 
and little Gopal will be put behind the bars. 

Maruti is a Bowrie by caste. The members of his 
gang commonly travel dressed as holy men, and 
Maruti goes as a chelae or disciple. One of the gang, 
dressed as a bangle seller, has gone ahead and gained 
entrance to the women's quarters of a rich man's house, 
as is always possible for a seller of these bright glass 
ornaments, which are the delight of all Indian women. 
He comes back and tells the gang where the money-box 
is kept. That night the practised hands of the Bowries, 
with the special tools which they always carry with 
them, dig a hole in the mud wall of the house. Maruti 
wriggles through and returns with the money-box. 

Shankar is a Bhampta boy. The Bhamptas are 
famous railway thieves. He and a fellow-Bhampta get 
into the "fire wagon," where, when opportunity comes, 
he slips to the floor. With the help of skilful toes and 
a sharp little knife, he opens and rifles the bags of 



106 INDIA OI^ THE MAECH 

the other travelers, while his companion covers hira 
with his loose clothing. 

Gangabai is a graceful girl of twelve, or should we 
call her a woman, since she is already married? She 
is a member of the gypsy tribe of Kan jars, and so is 
trained to dance and sing. With a group of her fellow- 
Kan jars, she went into a busy bazaar where one of the 
men' of the party sat down with his drum between his 
legs, while another got out a flute. Tom-tom-tom, 
tom-tom-tom, went the drum, and Gangabai's feet 
began to move, and her graceful body and arms, to 
sway in time with the music. At the sound of the 
drum, a crowd soon surrounded the little open space, 
for Indians love to watch the nautch, or dance. They 
wagged their heads and grunted in approval; many 
also tossed big copper coins to the players. Meantime 
the skilful fingers of the other members of the Kan jar 
party had been at work loosening the folds that held 
the money in many a waistband. That night it was 
a happy party that gathered for their dinner in front 
of the crude little skin tents of the Kanjars' gypsy 
camp out in the open country. But their pleasure was 
soon turned to despair when a group of policemen came 
and, finding loot in the little tents, marched all the 
men, including Gangabai's father and her husband, 
off to jail. 

What can be done with these millions of people who 
are using so much skill and daring in injuring other 
people, and who themselves live such a pitiful life, 
hated and feared by all and in turn fearing ordinary 
people as their enemies ? Indian jails are always full 
of them. Thousands of policemen are employed in 



BOEN TO BE KOBBEES 107 

watching them. The midnight roll-call of all who are 
registered as criminal tribesmen is one of the Govern- 
ment's devices for preventing and also for detecting 
crime, l^atnrally the tribesmen resent this bitterly, 
for not only does it seem to them a hateful intrusion 
into their home life, but it is a very effective way of 
keeping the men from all night expeditions, unless, in- 
deed, they can bribe those who come to take the roll. 

Simply to punish those who are found out will not 
redeem them. For hundreds of years successive gov- 
ernments have tried this method, but the tribes have 
gone right on teaching their children criminal ways. 
Somehow the whole plan of life of the criminal tribes 
must be changed. ''Spirit of our fathers, help us. 
Save us from the Sirkar and shut the mouths of the 
police." This is the regular prayer of one of the tribes. 
''God has sent us to earth to punish the avaricious and 
the rich. Without us what would the judges do ?" said 
one of them when he was on trial. 

Can they ever come to look differently upon them- 
selves and other people ? Can they become good citi- 
zens ? Yes, they can. That has been proved. It is a 
long, long road. The habits and beliefs of generations 
do not disappear in a night. It seems almost impos- 
sible to change their attitude of suspicion of people in 
general and of government in particular. Then how 
can these tribes ever be won to normal, happy lives ? By 
getting hold of the children. That is the principal 
answer. Put the children in schools where they learn 
to think and act like other children. Show them that 
ordinary folks are not their enemies. Teach them that 
there is a God who cares for them and their people 



108 IITDIA 0]Sr THE MAECH 

just as He does for everybody else. Really win the 
children, and where will the criminal tribes be twenty 
years hence ? A few old hardened offenders will be left, 
but young recruits will not be added, and the vicious 
system will be broken. 

But you cannot really win the children without doing 
something for their parents. Moreover, the Govern- 
ment naturally wants to stop crime now. It could not 
be satisfied with any plan which would allow the older 
criminals to keep right on stealing. 

One of the ways in which the Indian Government is 
meeting the situation is through the establishment of 
some very interesting institutions called Criminal 
Tribes Settlements. In the parts of India where such 
centers exist, when a man is convicted of crime, his 
wife and children are put into the settlement. After 
a time, if the man and his family behave well, he is 
released from jail and allowed to live with them in the 
settlement. But it is clearly understood that the 
minute any of the family group commits a crime, back 
he goes to prison. Sometimes a whole community of its 
own accord asks to be put into a settlement. They are 
tired of wandering about, always hounded by the 
police, and never sure of getting enough to eat. 

A little while ago two hundred and fifty men, women, 
and children were marched into one settlement. A 
band of fifteen hundred had been looting and terroriz- 
ing a whole region. When they were followed and dis- 
covered by the police, they scattered into the woods. 
These two hundred and fifty were all that were caught, 
and they were brought to the settlement to be restrained 
and, if possible, reformed. 



BOEW TO BE ROBBERS 109 

The keynote of the settlements is friendship. That 
is the only power that can win these wild people. Be- 
cause it is the business of missionaries to show friend- 
ship to needy people, the Government has quite natu- 
rally asked different missions to conduct such settle- 
ments. The Salvation Army has been a pioneer in this 
work, but several of the most important settlements are 
now in charge of other missions — for the most part 
American missions. 

One of the earliest and most successful among these 
is the Industrial Settlement for the Erukalas of South 
India, conducted by Samuel D. Bawden, whose big body 
and generous spirit give him an unusual power over 
the ^'Crims'' in his charge. 

Scattered over India there are now over thirty set- 
tlements for criminal tribesmen, with missionaries in 
charge who know the language of the people and mingle 
with them freely. The number is steadily increasing, 
for they are proving a great success. Some are very 
large and some, very small. One that had a large 
tract of land far off in a mountain valley started with 
only twelve families and aimed to teach them how to 
be good farmers. At the opposite extreme is the set- 
tlement at Sholapur with four thousand ''crims" from 
many tribes living next to a busy manufacturing city 
of 125,000 people. They earn their living by working 
as ordinary laborers in the mills, but live apart in a 
regular city of huts which make up the settlement. 

There are a thousand children of criminal tribes- 
men in the schools of this one settlement — that will 
mean a thousand less criminals and a thousand more 
intelligent useful men and women a few years hence, 



110 II^DIA OIsT THE MARCH 

if the schools are well run. It is an intensely interest- 
ing problem to know how to plan these schools so as to 
develop all the keen ability of the children and to direct 
their restless activity into useful lines. As you can 
well understand, there must be activity for body as 
well as for mind in such a school. You should see the 
keen look of enjoyment on the faces of the students 
when the time comes to line up to march to the swim- 
ming tank for the regular plunge. Yes, a daily bath 
is part of the regular school routine, and you can 
imagine the shouts of delight as the children jump in. 
Then there is industrial work in the school itself and 
drill in the playground, besides ample time for their 
own spontaneous games and for competitive sports, 
which satisfy their inherited desire for excitement and 
exploit. 

Under all the work of the school there lies a simple, 
natural Christian motive. The children alj. join in 
singing the Christian hymns and in repeating the 
Lord's prayer. They are taught Bible stories and come 
to trust the God who loves, but does not hate; who 
wants them to help, not to harm their fellows. In this 
way the settlements are seeking to get to the bottom of 
things. Gradually the children, and even their parents, 
are coming to feel that instead of Kuruppan and many 
other deities who were supposed to delight in crime, 
they have a God who calls them to love and to service. 
Instead of crime seeming to them right, it gradually 
begins to look wrong. Their whole attitude of life, their 
way of thinking and living is being transformed. 

But the criminal tribes are wild people, and they 
have some gruesome customs. When they are stirred, 



BOEN TO BE BOBBERS 



111 



they are like a herd of stampeding cattle. Those in 
charge of the settlements have some exciting experi- 
ences. Here is a story told by Mr. Strntton who was 
in charge of the big settlement for four thousand 
^^crims" in Sholapur of which we have already spoken. 
He forbade the holding within the settlement area of an 
annual sacrifice of buffaloes, which was one of the re- 
ligious ceremonies of one of the tribes in his care. It 
was not only cruel and revolting, but it was also most 
unsanitary. If they must have this sacrifice, Mr. Strut- 
ton insisted that they go off somewhere into the country 
to do it. He writes : 

"We had a great time over it. Five hundred of them 
rioted. They said I could kill them if I liked, but they 
would have their sacrifices. They even went so far as 
to take up children by a^ arm and a leg before the 
staff and threaten to dash their brains out, swinging 
them around their heads, if they were not allowed to 
go on with their festival and sacrifice. It was any- 
body's show for a while, and I really thought they were 
going to get out of hand myself, as the women were 
beating their heads on the ground and encouraging the 
men to defy the 'sahib.' I locked three of the ring- 
leaders up and made all the others sit do^vn and talk 
it out, and in the end, they gave in. But it was a great 
game of bluff while it lasted, and though they had to 
take their animals two miles out and kill them immedi- 
ately, instead of by the old slow-torture process, they 
were in the best of humor that night and laughed like 
children as they recounted the row of the morning 
among themselves. I liberated the men who had been 
locked up, after taking thumb impressions and four 



112 INDIA Olf THE MARCH 

hundred rupees' security from all their leaders that they 
would give no further trouble. So now the Dussera 
sacrifices are a thing of the past." 

The Kaikadis used to get gloriously drunk in con- 
nection with one of their annual religious festivals. 
As a result last year they had. a terrible fight, and 
when the officers of the settlement tried to stop it, the 
brawlers turned upon and beat them. This was a very 
serious offense, and next day twenty of the men were 
sentenced to go to prison. The head of the settlement 
gave them a talk on the results of drinking and offered 
to release two of the men at the end of the first month, 
if the entire community would for that month do with- 
out drink; to release two more after another month on 
the same condition; and so on till all were released. 
The Kaikadis got together and decided to accept his 
offer. They actually <3arried out their decision and gave 
up their old and honored custom. Instead of a drink- 
ing bout, they substituted a feast at the time of that 
festival. In this way another vicious custom was abol- 
ished. 

The progress of Christianity in these criminal tribes 
has been greatest among the Piramalai Kallars with 
their thousand converts, but many are being won from 
other groups as well. Here is the simple story of a con- 
verted murderer which will show what sort of men and 
women the "crims" can become, when Christ has won 
them to Himself. This murderer's name was Mesoba 
Londhe, and he was the leader of a gang of robbers. As 
a young man he and his companions thought no more of 
killing a man on one of their expeditions than they 
would of killing a chicken. Mesoba was caught in a 



BOEIT TO BE ROBBEES 113 

robbery and put in prison. There be learned to read. 
When be was on bis way borne from jail, anotber robber 
gave bim some little Cbristian, books wbicb be bad just 
received from a missionary. Mesoba read tbem, and 
somehow tbeir message of a God who was ready to for- 
give and receive all men touched bis heart. Then and 
there be decided that be would become a Christian. He 
began at once to teach his family and friends what he 
had learned. He was as fearless in bis new adventure 
as he had been in robbery. Somehow Christianity had 
changed him. He had had a terrible temper, but that 
was gone. He entirely gave up robbing. People began 
to call him the ^^ISTew Man." 

The missionary heard of him and came to bis vil- 
lage where they started a little church, and Mesoba, 
after he had been trained for the work, became its pas- 
tor. He served as pastor without any salary, earning 
his living by working as village watchman. By his 
simple faith and his life of loving service, he won hun- 
dreds of former robbers to become Christians. And the 
people in all that region blessed Mesoba for what he 
had done to make their lives safer and happier. 

In India today the Son of Man is coming to seek 
and to save those who were lost, and He is claiming 
&ve million of her people who were born to be robbers. 
Doesn't it look like a man's job to be His agents in win- 
ning these promising people ? 



VITAI LAMP ADA 

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night — 

Ten to make and the match to win — 
A bumping pitch and a blinding light. 

An hour to play and the last man in. 
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat. 

Or the selfish hope of a season's fame, 
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote 

"Play up ! play up ! and play the game ! " 

This is the word that year by year 

While in her place the School is set 
Every one of her sons must hear, 

And none that hears it dare forget. 
This they all with a joyful mind 

Bear through life like a torch in flame. 
And falling, fling to the host behind — 

"Play up! play up! and play the game!" 

— 8ir Henry Newholt 



VI 

Scouting in India 

The beautiful hill station of Kodaikanal ^ lies on the 
broad summit of a mighty mountain range seven thou- 
sand feet above sea level. It is like going into a differ- 
ent country to climb the steep path from the hot plains 
and to find ourselves in a land of cool breezes and 
showers, with groves of tall, graceful eucalyptus trees 
here and there on the slopes and with peaches and pears 
growing in the orchards. We are standing near the 
little lake that nestles among the hillsides and cottages. 

"Kodai" is the most popular of the hot weather re- 
sorts used by South India missionaries, and some of 
them are right in front of us now in the open field near 
the lake. At least two hundred men and women, boys 
and girls, are gathered for a baseball game between Can- 
ada and the United States. Judging by the noise, they 
are having a good time over it. That stocky man over on 
first base, who plays with a truly professional air, surely 
must have been a varsity player! Yes, he was a star 
ball player in his college days. How he is enjoying 
himself, now ! As you hear him "talk back" to the um- 
pire, you will scarcely believe me when I tell you that 
he is the venerable head of an important theological 
seminary. That pitcher, who seems to know how to 
double himself up in all the proper bowknots before he 
delivers the ball, was also an all-round athlete in his 
college days and is now a Y.M.C.A. secretary among 
the students of India. The little man out in center 

1 Kody-kah'nul. 

^ :' 115 



116 INDIA ON" THE MARCH 

field held a two-mile record for several years before lie 
came out to try to help the villagers of India. In the 
group of missionary players there are two or three 
varsity football men, a state tennis champion, and other 
real athletes, as well as some who never were in college 
athletics. There are also several fine, strapping boys 
on ,the two teams, pupils who are studying in the 
Kodaikanal school for missionary children. 

It really isn't high-class ball. We will have to 
acknowledge that! Some of these men have been out 
of the game for twenty-five years, and others never were 
players, but all are having the time of their lives. When 
the game is over and the final yells exchanged, some of 
the players gather to talk over the coming tennis match 
between the missionary club and the GymJcJiana, or club 
of other visitors at Kodai, who are, for the most part, 
government officials and army officers. That match 
is the greatest event of the summer season — and more 
than half the time the missionary club wins. 

We shall find boats on the little lake and row across 
to the school where its eighty pupils are getting an 
American education in the heart of India. They are 
certainly an alert and attractive looking group of real 
American boys and girls. Incidentally, when they 
come back to America, they do well in athletics and 
stand high in their classes. 

As we come up to the school from the lake shore we 
find some of the boys lying under a tree exchanging 
stories about their hunting experiences when they are 
with their families "down on the plains." Jack tells 
about shooting a vulture whose wings measured ten feet 
from tip to tip. Donald follows with a story of stalking 




Rev. J. R. Chitambar, the first Indian principal of Lueknow 
Christian College, a type of the devoted and capable Christian 
leader that schools and colleges are sending out into the life 
of India. These men and women are eager to give their 
Motherland the greatest service they can render— that of 
making Christ her leader and king. 



SCOUTIITG IN" INDIA 117 

a fine, big deer. Harry describes how bis fatber and 
be suddenly found themselves facing a pair of big 
wolves which were coining toward them on a lonely 
path. The wolves got away, but later on that same 
day Harry's father shot a wild boar. Bill caps the 
climax by telling how, when he was off elephant hunt- 
ing with his father and was lying alone in the bushes, 
a great Bengal tiger went by within ten feet of him. 

Between them, these boys and girls can jabber most 
of the languages of India. One comes from the heart 
of the wild Bhil country, another, from the great city 
of Calcutta, and the others, from cities and villages 
all over India. It took one of them five days to reach 
the school from his distant home. 

Why are their parents living in these places ? There 
are about fifty-five hundred missionaries settled all over 
India, and almost half of them are from the United 
States and Canada. Let us see what they are doing. 

We shall begin up in the foothills of the Himalayas 
near Dehra Dun. We are in the midst of a group of 
Indian Boy Scouts gathered around the camp-fire. Evi- 
dently they are on a hike and are having a very good 
time over it. Their leader is a slim six-footer and 
plainly an American. Yes, he is a missionary, — and a 
typical one, too, — Kev. Henry E. Ferger. A few years 
ago he was an American Boy Scout. When he went to 
India, he could see no reason why Indian boys should 
not have a chance to be Scouts. So in 1918 he started, 
with fifteen school-boys, the first Boy Scout troop in that 
part of India. At about the same time, here and there, 
other young India missionaries who had been Scouts 
at home were starting troops. 



118 INDIA OI^ THE MARCH 

Mr. Ferger and liis Scouts are keen for hikes. Once 
they went to Simla, where the Viceroy invited them to 
visit him and give him a demonstration. That was a 
great event in their lives. But trips like this one into 
the mountains really mean the most to them all because 
they are thus brought very close together. Indian boys 
are wonderfully responsive to their big white brothers 
when they really are brothers. Of such a hike as this, 
Mr. Ferger wrote : 

^^The day school closed, I started on a two-weeks' 
tramp back into the Himalayas, with ten of my Scouts. 
. . . We carried our own packs — a new experience for 
them in a land which knows little of the dignity of 
labor and where coolies abound at all railway stations. 
Shoulders ached and legs got tired and a few feet got 
blisters the first few days, but that soon passed over. 
Four of us were Christians, one Mohammedan, and six 
Hindus — four of these. Brahman, the highest caste. 
... I lived on Indian food, for we did our own cook- 
ing. Hindus, Christians, and Mohammedans ate to- 
gether, forgetting caste (sheltered from the public eye) 
and thus living out the Scout ideals of brotherhood. 
Leaves were used for plates, and fingers (as always by 
the natives), to eat with. It was an absolutely new 
experience for the boys. I was able to get much closer 
to them than ever before — especially one memorable 
night when our bedding did not arrive, and we seven 
had to sleep on the floor on one thin mattress and under 
one blanket! And at seven thousand feet elevation it 
was cold, even inside the rest-house." 

With this background you can understand how the 
Scout troop at Dehra Dun has made its record. A part 



SCOUTING IN INDIA 119 

of its last report reads: "The present strength of the 
troop is fifty-one, of whom fourteen are King's Scouts. 
Of these, ten have their first grade all-round cords (for 
six proficiency badges), and SiYey their second grade 
cords (for twelve badges). Three others have passed 
their First Class tests and eighteen others, their Second 
Class tests. Sixteen are as yet only Tenderfoots, though 
many of these have done ;^art of their Second Class 
tests.'' 

It is not so easy for high-caste Indian boys to catch 
the Scout idea of service as it is for American boys. 
This story shows how these boys of many castes are try- 
ing to be good Scouts. "The two chief religious fairs of 
the year in Dehra Dun come early each spring, and the 
latter of the two has just taken place. Our Scouts did 
splendid work at these, serving the people in many 
ways. We had the fly of a tent pitched in the center 
of the fair, which was held in the streets and bazaars 
surrounding the large Sikh temple here. This was a 
place where people could sit and rest. At one side we 
had a low platform with several large tubs. These the 
Scouts themselves kept constantly filled with drinking 
water from a near-by well. It was quite a thing to get 
the boys to draw and carry the water themselves, for 
usually in the East any such work is considered be- 
neath one's dignity. 

"The most interesting task was down at the third- 
class ticket office at the railway station the next day 
when the crowds were leaving. We went there three 
hours before the train was to leave. There was a big 
crowd about the ticket office, fighting and struggling to 
get to it, the biggest and strongest, of course, winning 



120 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

out. We soon changed that, making them form a long 
single line and gradually take their turn in good 
American style. This was the first time any of them 
had ever done this, I suppose, hut they soon caught on 
and appreciated it, even if it v^^as contrary to their ex- 
perience. At times there were sixty in line." 

Mr. Ferger has now hecome Scout Commissioner and 
tells' of a Scout Rally of eleven hundred Indian Scouts 
who came together to meet the Chief Scout, General 
Baden Powell. There are ahout twenty thousand hoys 
in India today who are learning Scout hrotherhood and 
service. For the most part, they are doing this with 
the help of such missionaries as Henry Ferger. 

But long hefore there was such a thing as a Boy 
Scout movement, missionaries had heen trying to 
awaken in Indian students the love of sport and enjoy- 
ment of real service which they were sure were hidden 
somewhere in every true hoy. If you want to know 
how an out-of-doors Englishman can make over hoys 
and gradually do much to clean up the whole life of an 
Oriental city and district, get Tyndale-Biscoe's Charac- 
ter Building in Kashmir. Tyndale-Biscoe was a great 
hoxer in college, and in many ways a Theodore Roose- 
velt sort of man. He came out to India to run a small 
high school in Srinagar in the heautiful valley of Kash- 
mir. Kashmir is a veritahle garden spot watered hy 
countless streams on which the lazy househoats move 
amid orchards of plum and apple and gardens filled with 
roses, while, rising on every side are the mighty snow- 
capped peaks of the Himalayas. The people are fair 
and tall, hut rather effeminate. To quote from Mr. 
Tyndale-Biscoe's own story of his work there : 



101 
SCOUTIKG IK INDIA 

"Twenty-nine years ago, I fonnd myself for the first 
time in Srinagar-a huge rabbit-warren sort of place 
of 125)00 inhabitants. All streets crooked all streets 
narrow all streets filthy. The stench of the c ty had 
reacri me long before I entered it. One wonld have 
roSt.thatthe%treetsh^d^eenW^^^^^^ 

nrpvpntina: any one irom using xuem, -^^ 
preveuiiUfa o. j «V,onps and sizes had 

cobbles, stones and rocks of ail shapes an 
been thrown down indiscrimmately so that pedestrians 
had to pict their way frona rock to rock avoiding, if 
possible the lakes of putrid filth that lay be ween. 

^ "The male sex pushed all women and children out of 
the path, but made way for cows and the pariah dogs, 
Is the former have horns and the latter possess teeth. 
AU this and much more, showed me the lie of the land 
tndte need of a change, even in the unchangeable 
Eatt. Now if one desires to change or const- a 
thing, it is usually wise to commence at the bottom 
Whatbetter beginning could one desire than a school of 
young boys, and what better training-ground could boys 
have than a city like Srinagar? . , , . .1,^ Wg 

"I shall never, never forget my first sight of the boys 
in the school hall twenty-nine years ago. Some two 
hundred dirty, evil-smelling human bemgs, squattmg 
on the hall floor with mouths open, a vacant expression 
on their faces, and with fingers either messing w th 
heir f ce , noses, or ears, or else holding i^repots under 
the r foul garments shaped like long night-gowns, the 
tmes from the charcoal and the heat of their bodies 
thickening the atmosphere of this low-ceilinged room. 
As of ten :s not the only clean part about the Brahrnan 
boys was the daub of red paint plastered from the fore- 



122 INDIA OTT THE MARCH 

head down the bridge of the nose, put on fresh every 
morning by the priest, to show that they were worship- 
pers of the god Siva. These creatures I was to call 
boys! * Jelly fish' was the only appropriate term to 
apply to them." 

He determined that these jelly fish should become 
men, and he tells us how he went about to accomplish it. 
He could not imagine a healthy boys' school without 
sports, and, because the school was on the river, he de- 
cided to begin his athletics with rowing. But the boys 
refused, "l^o Brahman must ever use a paddle or oar, 
or in any way propel a boat, as that would lower their 
caste to that of the despised boatmen. . . . This prob- 
ably was the root of the whole business; namely, that 
the act of pulling an oar might produce muscle on the 
arms, and, as muscle was only worn by coolies, my 
worthies might be mistaken for such low-caste beings. 
'No Brahman had so vulgar an appendage as muscle on 
the arm." 

This doughty Englishman was not to be daunted by 
age-long prejudices like these. At the start he fairly 
forced his young teachers and his boys to row. ISTow all 
the high schools of Srinagar have crews on the river, and 
the frequent regattas are great events in the city. It 
was the same story in regard to swimming. At first he 
threw the boys into the river. JSTow several of them 
each year pass a test which requires them to swim three 
miles. 

Tyndale-Biscoe never forgets that the aim of all the 
athletics is Christian service. The school has a metal 
badge which the boys are proud to wear. It bears the 
school crest and the motto, ^'In all things be men." 



SCOUTING IN INDIA 123 

They are taught that if they wear that badge, they must 
always be ready to help anyone whom they see in diffi- 
culty or danger. One of their regular ways of service 
is to take the patients in the hospital out for a row on 
the lake. First, they have to paddle a mile to the 
hospital landing. Then, they have to help and some- 
times even to carry the patients the two hundred yards 
from the hospital. ^Those who are unable to walk soon 
find themselves riding on Brahmans from the hospital 
to the boats. Mohammedans on the backs of Brahmans ! 
'No wonder some of the Brahmans of the old school open 
their eyes at the sight and mutter mutterings. But the 
school boys take the patients out just the same and 
give them a fine ride in the lake, singing as they paddle. 
Before these boys have got the patients back in the hos- 
pital and their boats back at their own landing, they 
have spent from three to five hours in serving their sick 
fellow-citizens." 

And they do even more significant things. Once a 
great fiood came rushing over the lower parts of the 
city, and a group of outcaste sweepers was caught on 
the roof of a mud house which was rapidly dissolving 
in the fiood. There were plenty of boats near by, but 
no regular boatmen would come to their aid because, 
forsooth, they were outcastes ! Fortunately for them, 
one of the school boats came up looking for chances to 
help. It took several journeys to rescue all those who 
were on the roof, and as the work went on, the high- 
caste boatmen cursed the school boys for so defiling 
their caste. "But the boys gave them cheers for their 
curses and went right on till all the outcastes were 
saved." 



124 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

Mr. Tjndale-Biscoe tells with just pride the follow- 
ing story of another flood rescue : "One of the junior 
teachers, a slightly built fellow, but a credit to his ath- 
letic training in the school, was attracted by the cries 
of many women huddled together on a piece of dry 
ground which was fast growing less and less on account 
of the increasing waters. Close by were several boat- 
men in their boats, who were keeping an irritating dis- 
tance and bargaining with those terrified women for an 
impossible salvage. The young master was naturally 
enraged at their brutality. Off went his coat, and the 
next second he was in the flood; before the astonished 
crowd could gasp he was in one of the boats. Out went 
the boatmen, but not before the young teacher had seized 
the paddle, with which he soon brought the boat to shore 
and rescued at his leisure the crowd of women; while 
the boatmen, robbed of their prize, vented their rage in 
their usual way, a la best Billingsgate, recounting the 
terrible things they would do to the young athlete when 
they got hold of him." 

In 1918 the school records showed the following list 
of deeds done by the boys: 



Lives saved from drowning . . . . . .19 

Help given to women 92 

Help given to children 60 

Help given to old men 23 

Help given to blind folk 17 

Help given to neighbors 60 

Help given to animals 15 

Help by parties of boys in 11 fires 

Help by groups who taught a night school several 

months 
300 sick folks were taken on a total of 56 trips 
Other services of many kinds were rendered by 

groups of boys 



SCOUTIl^G IIT INDIA 125 

Remember that the inspiration of all such work by 
the pupils and teachers of this school is Jesns Christ. 
Every student has as his first lesson each day a study 
of the Bible. There are other high schools in the city 
to which the people of Srinagar and the rest of Kashmir 
can send their boys, yet in spite of the shocking acts of 
the boys in swimming and rowing and actually defiling 
themselves by serving outcastes, and in spite of the Bible 
study, the school has grovni in twenty-nine years from 
two hundred students to fifteen hundred. It is today 
probably the greatest means of real progress in the 
whole of Kashmir. The manliness and enthusiasm of 
this unique Englishman are changing the entire life of 
the country. Or is it not rather the spirit of Jesus 
Christ in Mr. Tyndale-Biscoe that is making the 
change ? That is the way in which he would want to 
have us put it. He says : "At present my fellows look 
at Christ Jesus as the most perfect man, who went 
about doing good, and they wish to walk after Him, 
and one's hope is that, walking after Him, they will 
find Him and, finding Him, will trust Him with their 
all as their Savior and King, and go forth to fight for 
right, not only with the school shield on their breast, 
but under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ. ... I 
prophesy that Kashmir will one day be won for Christ." 

Henry Ferger and Tyndale-Biscoe are just two of 
India's educational missionaries. All over India you 
will find others, many of them young men and women 
who are working in mission high schools and colleges, 
as well as in connection with village schools and district 
boarding-schools, training-schools for teachers, medical 
schools, and industrial schools. 



126 INDIA OW THE MARCH 

There are almost as many schools for girls as for 
boys — and there ought to be still more. 'No service 
America can render to India is greater than that given 
by strong, happy, American college girls to the weak 
and needy women of India, the victims of so many age- 
long wrongs. In the days of beginnings of educational 
work for women a Brahman said to a woman mission- 
ary, "First teach our donkeys to read, then teach our 
girls." The great pioneer of educational missions in 
India, Alexander Duff, is reported to have remarked, 
"To try to educate women would be like trying to climb 
a wall a hundred feet high, with nothing but bare hands 
and feet to help you — such are the obstacles in the 
way." But Isabella Thoburn and other women mis- 
sionaries dared to believe that Indian girls could be 
educated. Someone has well said that they earned the 
right to join the Psalmist in exclaiming, "By my God 
I have leaped over a wall." 

Today women graduates of mission high schools, nor- 
mal schools, medical schools, and colleges are scattered 
over India carrying sweetness and light wherever they 
go. It was largely the faith and enthusiasm of Lilavati 
Singh, one of Isabella Thoburn's own students, that per- 
suaded her to open a Woman's College in Lucknow. 
This mischievous Indian schoolgirl became a brilliant 
leader of Indian education and chairman of the 
Woman's Department of the World's Christian Student 
Federation. 

Isabella Thoburn and Lilavati Singh, working to- 
gether, built up the Isabella Thoburn College. This 
has recently been made the Woman's College of the 
great new Lucknow University. It is about to move 



SCOUTING 11^ INDIA 127 

into fine buildings on a spacious new campus of twentj- 
five acres where it can better meet the critical needs 
of India's women in this new era. 

We can catch something of the spirit of this college 
by reading extracts from a round robin letter kept up 
by eight of her alumnse. The first is from Sona, a 
Hindu girl. ^^My aunt, who is my guardian, is, as 
you know, companion to the Rani (Queen), and as the 
Rani is absolutely uneducated and really quite igno- 
rant and superstitious, I am acting as a kind of private 
secretary. 

"There is such an absence of natural, everyday hap- 
piness among our Hindu people. I do not know how to 
account for it. I think of this by myself for minutes 
at a time, and I do feel there is something unusual 
in Christianity to explain the happiness I have seen 
among Christians. But I do not have much time for 
thinking, for I am usually very busy. I try to enter- 
tain the Rani by telling her stories. Sometimes I am 
even guilty of tacking on morals, and even of Spoking 
them down her throat,' which we were taught in peda- 
gogy was very poor teaching! But if you only knew 
the temptation! For instance, she is so very unhygi- 
enic, especially when it comes to fresh air. She shuts 
herself in her gloomy apartments and will not come 
to walk even in her pretty garden which is surrounded 
by a high wall, and which, therefore, will satisfy Hindu 
etiquette by keeping her safely secluded from the view 
of men. But lately, by giving her very simple talks 
on anatomy and physiology, emphasizing the use of 
the lungs, she begins to see the value of fresh air. I'm 
even hoping she'll allow me to invite some of the high- 



128 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

caste ladies here to hear a lecture on hygiene by 'yours 
truly' V' 

The second is just a word from IN^irmolini — a mem- 
ber of a reformed sect. "There is such a difference 
between a Hindu school, however good, and our dear 
old school. I wish I knew how to bring the spirit 
of our school into this one. I am trying to practice 
the example of our teachers." 

The third selection is from Shanti, a Christian wife 
and mother. "Dear girls, you in the hot plains may 
well envy me in our lovely little Himalayan cottage. 
Well, if you had married my nice minister-man, you 
might have had the same joyous lot. Of course, there 
are disadvantages of living seven days from the rail- 
way, such as having no congenial children for our tots 
to play with. ISTaturally, I have to give a good deal 
of time to their school, as well as the ordinary care 
they require. Yet I find time to help my husband in 
his many, many and sometimes very difficult tasks. 
What else can I do, when we are the only relief agency, 
the only village improvement society, if you prefer, for 
a million or more people ? By Ve,' I mean our little 
mission station here. There is, as you know, a Mission 
Hospital here, which is closed and has been for a year 
for lack of a doctor or nurse, so that I have to serve 
as doctor and nurse for our poor mountain folk for 
miles around, and all the training I've had is from 
books ! Then we have a little church and a boys' school, 
and hope soon to open a girls' school. Oh, the oppor- 
tunities are endless, and if any of you need or want 
a change from the plains, where I know too well there 
are more-than-endless opportunities, do come help us 



SCOTJTING IN INDIA 129 

away off here. You will find that with all our business, 
our home is hospitable, for we want it to stand for 
all that a Christian home should be." 

These are just three typical graduates of one of 
India's mission colleges for women. They are carry- 
ing into palace, school, and home the spirit of their 
Alma Mater. 

In the same great city of Lucknow are rising the 
beautiful new buildings of the Lucknow Christian Col- 
lege for men. This college has over 700 students in 
its various departments. It is alert to meet the needs 
of new India and for this purpose has a School of 
Commerce with nearly two hundred students. Its prin- 
cipal, or president, is one of its own graduates, Kev. 
J. E.' Chitambar, a Christian of Brahman blood who 
has proved his fitness for this high position by his 
work as a professor in the college, as a minister, and 
as a District Superintendent of the Methodist Church. 
Mr. Chitambar will have several American missionaries 
on his staff. These men are proud to work under an 
Indian of his ability and devotion. 

A sixth of the college students of India are studying 
in mission colleges. The majority of them are Brah- 
mans and only a few become out-and-out Christians, but 
they carry from their missionary professors and from 
their Bible study something of the spirit of the Master. 
Most of them become leaders in reform movements, 
and all their lives they remain friends of the missionary 
and of Christianity. 

There was a great stir all over South India a few 
years ago when two Brahman boys from two of the 



130 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

leading families of the great aristocratic city of Ma- 
dura decided to become Christians. Public meetings 
were held. The governor of the Province was asked 
to prevent the baptism. Orthodox leaders started a 
movement to boycott all mission schools. This move- 
ment, like many other similar attempts, did not suc- 
ceed. The boys were baptised, and mission schools 
continue to prosper. An interesting fact in this case 
was that the father of one of the boys had been a 
student at Madura College — a missionary institution. 
When he was a student, he had, himself, wanted to 
become an open follower of Christ, and now he abso- 
lutely refused to try to keep his boy from becoming a 
Christian. 

All over India there are men by the thousands like 
that father who come from such schools as Tyndale- 
Biscoe's and from colleges like Madura and Lucknow. 
Even now they are doing much to bring the spirit of 
Jesus into the entire life of India. Some day a great 
Indian leader will arise who will win many of these 
friends and secret disciples into open, fearless followers 
of Christ. 

A surprising fact is that the attractiveness of Christ 
and his power to give India the leadership which she 
needs today is being recogTiized even by students and 
leaders in non-Christian colleges. 

Dr. E. Stanley Jones, a great Christian lecturer to 
educated Indians, has recently completed a preaching 
tour over India. He says: ^^Of one thing we are as- 
sured, the present unrest is not merely political, it has 
got down into the people. I have met less opposition 
on this trip than at any time in India. 



SCOUTING IN INDIA 131 

"At Bulsar tlie crowd was particularly responsive, 
and again and again broke out in applause at the most 
definitely Christian statements. Here our meetings 
were in a Hindu Dharamsala, or Religious Rest- 
House. . . . 

"But at Benares — the holy place of Hinduism — the 
meetings were the best of all. Principal Dhurva of 
the Hindu University and some of the Hindu profes- 
sors of the University were secured as chairmen of 
the meetings. The Hindu students sent me a special 
invitation to speak at the University. It was an op- 
portunity to get right into the intellectual and religious 
center of Hinduism. I have never had a more respon- 
sive audience. They filled the hall to overflowing. I 
was invited back for three other addresses. At one 
of the addresses the chairman of the meeting, a Hindu 
professor, in his opening remarks, said: ^I have been 
attending the public lectures at night, and, while a 
friend remarked about the speaking, I said that my 
interest was not in that, but in the one of whom Mr. 
Jones was speaking. There has never appeared in 
human history such a great personality as Jesus Christ. 
I repeat it, Jesus Christ is the greatest personality the 
world has ever seen.' This he said in a Hindu Uni- 
versity before a Hindu audience, and there was no dis- 
sent. . . . 

"There is a great and far-reaching change coming 
over the people in regard to the attitude toward Jesus 
Christ: bitter resentment and antagonism to Western 
civilization and to the spirit of white dominance, but 
a wondrous drawing toward Jesus Christ. 

"When we get down to the facts and face them, there 



132 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

is no other way out except the Christian way. . . . Are 
we not on the eve of a break ? I believe we are. How 
long that eve will be, I do not know, hut the break will 
come/^ 

My own main job in India was a training-school for 
male Christian teachers. My boys and I had many a 
fine, game of atia-patia^ as well as of volley-ball and 
football. When they first come to the training-school, 
they do not love games as American boys do. Many of 
them have had little chance to play, back in their vil- 
lages, but before they have been long with us, they like 
to play and to play hard. Our graduates are scattered 
all over Western India as Christian teachers and Chris- 
tian preachers. There are probably nine hundred grad- 
uates of this school now at work. Many of them live 
in villages where no other man can read. In order 
that each worker may be generally helpful to his village, 
our school gives courses in agriculture, in first aid, and 
in simple sanitation. 

The life of many of these villages is so low and 
crude that it takes real heroism for educated boys to 
cut themselves off from their more attractive surround- 
ings and to settle down to their new tasks. On the other 
hand, if he puts his whole heart into his work, one of 
our boys can sometimes change the whole life of a vil- 
lage, making it a cleaner, happier, and better place. 
Many of these boys are outcast e Hindus when they come 
to us. They are all Christian before they graduate. 

A Brahman Educational Inspector who was examin- 
ing the training-school said to me, "I met one of your 
boys the other day, up in Khandesh. He was way out 



SCOTJTINa IN INDIA 133 

in the jungle teaching in a little Bhil village. I asked 
him if he wasn't afraid to stay in that wild country 
alone. He replied, ^I^o, I'm not afraid now. I was at 
first. I almost decided that I couldn't stay. But when 
I saw how much these people needed a school, I prayed 
God to give me courage to stay on.' That teacher was 
only an outcaste Mahar hefore he became a Christian, 
wasn't he?" 

"Yes," I answered, "he was." 

"Well, where did he get the spirit that made him 
stay on among those wild Bhils ?" he asked. 

"I think that it must have come from Jesus Christ," 
I answered, and the Brahman Inspector bowed his head 
in assent. 

Many other mission schools are sending out into the 
life of India a constant stream of thousands of Indian 
Christian leaders, many of them strong and devoted men 
and women. They are eager to give to their Motherland 
the greatest service they can render — that of making 
Christ her leader and king. Would you not like such 
a chance as Henry Ferger and the rest of us have to 
mold the lives of boys and girls of India and to help 
them to become her true leaders in this critical new 
day? 



As a business man speaking to business men, I am 
prepared to say that the work which has been done by 
missionary agency in India exceeds in importance all 
that has been done (and much has been done) by the 
British Government in India since its commencement. 
— Sir W. MacJcworth Young, K.C.8.I., formerly Lieu- 
tenant-Governor of the Punjab 



VII 
Those Poor Missionaries 

If I were a cassowary 

On the plains of Timbuctoo, 
I'd eat w every missionary, 

Coat and hat and hymn-book too. 

Comb with me to Vadala to meet Eev. Edward Fair- 
bank who is a "typical" general evangelistic mission- 
ary althougli I'll confess at once that I never saw him 
with a black ministerial hat on, and I think the cas- 
sowary would have a rather hard time swallowing any 
one so strong and subst£.ntial as he is. Vadala is a 
little Indian village of about five hundred people, 
twenty miles from the railroad in the heart of village 
India It is the headquarters of Mr. Fairbank s field, 
the Vadala district. This district covers an irregular 
area of perhaps five hundred square miles dotted with 
little towns and villages in which live over one hundred 

thousand people. , ^ -u- „ 

You will like Mr. Fairbank from the start. Jivery- 
body does. As soon as you look into his smiling blue 
eyes and grasp his firm hand, you know that he toois 
a good scout. He has two outstanding characteristics 
which impress anyone who meets him, vital energy and 
sheer friendliness. 

For the sake of efiiciency, he generally uses an auto- 
mobile for his longer trips in his district ; but recently 
when there was no gasoline to be had, he 3uniped on 
his bicycle and rode twenty-seven miles into Ahmedna- 
ear, did his business there, and rode twenty-seven miles 
back again, just as though he did not live in the tropics 

° 135 



136 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

and were not over fifty years old. He will tell you 
that it is the healthy ont-of-door life of the district 
which is keeping him strong. Once when he was rid- 
ing, he came to a river which was in flood, as Indian 
rivers often are after a storm. It was important that 
he should get across, so he waded right in, and when 
he could wade no farther, he struck out and swam across 
the rushing stream, hicycle and all. 

Somehow his friendliness has transferred itself to 
his Indian fellow-workers. There is a wonderful at- 
mosphere of good-will at Vadala. One or two Indians 
who were inclined to be sour and aloof when they first 
came there to work, could not long resist this spirit 
and soon were friendly like the rest. The district has 
more Christians and more progressive churches than 
any other in all that part of India ; they take the lead 
in generous giving and also in managing their own 
affairs. 

There are forty-one village schools in the district into 
which the children of outcastes, high-caste people, and 
Christians are all crowding. We must see one of these 
simple little schools in its crude building, with only 
a table, a chair, a blackboard, and a map for furniture, 
which yet is a means of Christian helpfulness in all 
the village. From these village schools come a con- 
stant stream of the brightest boys to the boarding-school 
at Yadala, and from this, in turn, to higher schools. 
There are three villages in this district, each of which 
has sent out no fewer than sixty boys to become Chris- 
tian leaders throughout Western India. One of these 
boys has just been graduated with a brilliant record 
from an American theological seminary, and is going 



THOSE POOR MISSIONARIES 137 

back to be a leader among the educated young men of 
Bombay. 

All over this big district people of every sort look 
to tbe missionary as their friend. He bas at Vadala 
a dispensary with a trained Indian doctor. In times 
of plague or famine, be is tbere to help. Tbe great 
cburcb wbicb seats thirteen hundred people was built 
in famine days as famine relief work. Its red-tiled 
tower can be seen for many miles and is a symbol of 
helpfulness to all that region. Indians love lawsuits, 
but never a lawsuit goes to court from Vadala. The 
people bring their differences to the missionary, and 
he settles them all with such care and fairness that his 
decisions have always been accepted. "No wonder that 
all classes in the Vadala District are friendly and re- 
sponsive to Christianity. 

Once in famine days Mr. Fairbank was riding out 
from the city to Vadala on his bicycle, carrying a great 
bag of silver rupees for relief payments. He was de- 
layed and darkness overtook him. In famine times 
men become desperate, and many robberies take place. 
Suddenly a light was flashed at him. He saw a figure 
on horseback in front of him, and he was told to halt. 
Then someone called, "It is the Vadala sahib. Let him 
pass!" And he rode in safety through the band of 
robbers, carrying his heavy bag of money. He was 
"their sahib." Even in their desperate straits, they 
would not rob him. 

So he goes about ceaselessly, examining a school 
here, preaching in simple, direct words to a new group 
there, settling quarrels, conducting classes for his In- 
dian fellow-workers, living a true Christian life of 



138 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

service. He and his wife are pouring their cheer 
and their faith — their very life — into the lives of these 
country people whom they love. The friendly, respon- 
sive Marathas, the thousands of converts, and the fine 
Christians who go far and wide from this district as 
leaders, are the natural result of such service. 

When the hard day's work is done, Edward Fair- 
bank loves to go off with his rifle after a deer or play 
a game with the schoolboys or work in his garden. 
Listen to his hearty, care-free laugh. How he enjoys 
a good joke ! You never went on a hike with a better 
fellow than he is. And back of it all and in it all 
is the sweetness of a Christian home and the devotion 
of a wife no less able or attractive than he, who is 
giving herself just as naturally and beautifully as he 
is giving himself. A typical ordained missionary! I 
envy any cassowary who gets him. 

Forty years ago Anna Kugler, an attractive Ameri- 
can girl of fine family, set out for India under the 
American Lutheran Board. She had the best medical 
training that America could give her. A brilliant 
career opened before her in America. But she had re- 
ceived a letter from a missionary, appealing to her 
to come out to help the needy women of India. When 
she asked her Board to send her, they replied that - 
they were not ready to start medical work and that 
if she wanted to go out, she must go as a teacher and 
worker in the Indian home, — a zenana worker. Dr. 
Kugler accepted this appointment. She was so eager 
to serve India that she was willing, if necessary, to 
give up her medical career to do so. Yet she had faith 



THOSE POOB MISSIONAKIES 139 

that tlie medical work would somehow open up. A 
present of a hundred dollars made it possible for her 
to take a few instruments and medicines. With this 
equipment and a brave heart, she landed in South 
India — the first woman missionary physician to go to 
the great Madras Presidency of India with its millions 
of suffering women and children. 

All the equipment for medical work that she had 
at first was a small cupboard with her few instruments 
and medicines. Yet patients began to come to her 
from the day she reached Guntur, and it was not long 
before they came so fast that she had little time for 
zenana work. After a while she fitted up a little store- 
room with a table and a few shelves as her ^^hospital." 
A veranda served as a waiting-room. Working in this 
way, in her first year she treated six hundred eases. 
But soon the medicines were exhausted, and the work 
had to be closed. Dr. Kugler used this interval for the 
study of the language and for zenana and school work. 
Then her fellow-missionaries, out of their own meager 
incomes, subscribed one thousand rupees, or about three 
hundred and fifty dollars, for a hospital. Friends at 
home followed, and the wonderful medical career of 
Dr. Anna S. Kugler was fairly begun. 

At first the doctor had often to submit to indignities 
from bigoted high-caste Hindus, in whose eyes she was 
an outcaste. She wrote: "It is true that it was not 
pleasant to be constantly reminded, as one entered the 
high-caste Hindu homes, that one was an unclean ob- 
ject, defiling everything that one touched. It was not 
pleasant to have all the bed clothes put to one side 
while one examined the patient, or to have a very ill 



140 INDIA ON" THE MARCH 

patient taken out of bed and brought out into the court- 
yard because the doctor was too unclean to go inside. 
!N^either did one enjoy stooping down and picking up 
the medicine bottle because one was too unclean to take 
it directly from the hand of a Brahman. But it was 
all in the way of opening up the path for those who 
came later." In these homes she is now honored. 

When she went to America for her first furlough, 
she had already won her way so far that people of 
every class expressed their deep appreciation of what 
she had done, and when she returned, three rich men 
of Guntur gave a hundred rupees apiece for the new 
hospital property. But it was hard in those days to 
get money for a hospital for women. Dr. Kugler was 
determined that the Indians themselves should do a 
part; so she toured among the villages, treating the 
peoples' ailments and gathering money. Little by little 
the hospital became a reality. Pirst, a fine site was 
bought; then, the dispensary was built; then, the hos- 
pital itself. All the time she was continuing her deep 
interest in the schools and other mission work, for 
her sympathy was as broad as the need of the people. 
After a time a nurse came from America. Then an- 
other American doctor was sent out. After fifteen 
long years of struggle, she had the "finest mission hos- 
pital in all South India," with a children's ward, ma- 
ternity block, chapel, nurses' home, and dispensary. In 
four years the patients treated in the dispensary num- 
bered 100,779. ISTearly eight thousand operations were 
performed, and over fifteen hundred children were born 
in the hospital. 



THOSE POOB MISSIOIJAEIES 141 

Two typical instances of the influence of Dr. Kugler 
were told recently by Mrs. McCanley, one of lier fellow- 
missionaries : 

In a second-class railway carriage on tlie train from 
Gnntur to Bezwada sit a Brahman gentleman and his wife 
and a missionary lady, all traveling by the night mail to 
Bezwada. After a little friendly inquiry, the Brahman 
gentleman tells the missionary this story of his recent visit 
to Guntur. 

"Yes, madam, my wife and I have been staying here 
in Guntur for the past month in order that my wife might 
have treatment at Kugler's hospital. My wife has not been 
well for a long time, and I have spent much on native 
doctors, all to no avail. Finally a friend of mine in our 
town in the Kistna district urged me to bring her here 
to Dr. Kugler for treatment, and I am glad to tell you 
that today she is going home well. Yes, Dr._ Kugler is a 
goddess, madam, no ordinary wom^n. We think she must 
be an incarnation of Lakshmi (Goddess of Healing). 
Otherwise, how could she do all the wonderful things she 
does? I am quite powerless to express my gratitude to 
her for all the pains she took to cure my wife. ^ 

"Yes, she told my wife much about Jesus Christ, whom 
she seems to love very much. ^A^en I was a student in 
college, I too learned about Jesus Christ, but I did not 
know before I met Dr. Kugler that anyone could be so self- 
sacrificing for the sake of any god. Why, madam, she 
used to get up any time in the night and come to my wife's 
bedside to see how she was, and she herself came every 
Sunday afternoon and talked to my wife about Jesus 
Christ and how He could heal her if she sought Him. 
Well, I intend to try to follow Him more myself after this, 
for i have seen how He can send a woman away out to 
this country from far-away America to give her life and 
all she is to help the women of this country, just because 
she loves Jesus Christ." 

The scene changes. This time a poor Sudra woman is 



142 IISTDIA ON THE MARCH 

just leaving the hospital with her little eight-year-old girl 
who had been badly gored by an angry buffalo. The child's 
face was torn partly off by the buffalo, and the whole cheek 
had been skilfully sewed up by Dr. Kugler; and now after 
several weeks the mother is starting out to return with her 
little girl entirely healed, to her village some thirty miles 
away. The poor mother, after presenting some fruit and 
a couple of rupees, as her offering to the hospital, falls at 
Dr. Kugler's feet, with her hands clasped, and says : "Oh, 
Amma, what are these small gifts compared with all I owe 
you? I am a poor worm. You are a great and powerful 
mother. You have had compassion on me and have healed 
my child. She would have died but for you. Even had 
she lived, she would have been terribly deformed, and I 
could never have found a husband for her. Now she is 
going out with only a slight scar. This is all due to your 
great love and goodness. Surely I will remember this 
Yesu Swami about whom you have told me, because I 
know you bow to Him only. Yes, He must be a very great 
Swami to have such a follower as you, and hereafter I 
shall pray to Him, and not to Krishna and Hanuman, as 
I used to, for now I know that He must be the true God.'' 

One of the staunchest friends of Dr. Kugler is an 
Indian Rajah, M. Bhuyanga Rao Bahadur of Ellore. 
Dr. Kugler had restored his beloved wife, the Rani 
(Queen) Chinnamma Rao to health. Later she had 
saved the life of his son and heir. When he asked 
what he might do to show his gratitude, Dr. Kugler 
suggested that he build a rest-house in which Hindu rel- 
atives could stay while attending patients who were 
in the hospital. This Rajah got two other Indians 
to give the land, and he built the rest-house. But 
that was not all. He had wanted to know the secret 
of her power, and she had told him that it was in 
Jesus Christ and had given him a copy of the 'New 



THOSE POOR MISSIONARIES 143 

Testament. He eagerly read the book and saw in it 
the medicine that his land needed even more than 
physical healing. So he translated it into Telugu 
poetry which Brahmans and all educated Telugus would 
delight to read. When the new rest-house was dedi- 
cated, he gave away five hundred copies of his transla- 
tion to the guests. His youngest child is named An- 
namma in honor of the doctor. On his very letterhead 
this Brahman Kajah has printed a picture of the Christ 
whom he now regards as the hope of India and whom, 
as he says in the preface to his translation, he first 
saw reflected in the pure and beautiful life of this 
American doctor. 

The British Government has twice recognized the 
services of Dr. Kugler to India by giving her "honors." 
But it is the love of the people which is her priceless 
decoration. Mrs. McCauley says: "We make bold 
to say that no white person in all the Telugu coimtry 
. . . populated by more than twenty million people, 
is so widely known and revered as Dr. Kugler. She 
is honored by government officials both English and In- 
dian, by the educated Brahman lawyer, by the prosper- 
ous merchant, by the thrifty farmer, by the poor out- 
caste Christian — by all classes. All seek to do her 
honor. All seek her presence and help in times of 
trouble and her approbation and praise in times of 
success and prosperity." 

In her office she has hanging this motto : "Ourselves 
your servants for Jesus' sake," and most wonderfully 
does she carry out its ideal in her daily life of service 
to the women and children of India. 



144 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

Dr. Kugler's hospital is one of a great chain of mis- 
sionary hospitals and dispensaries which you can now 
find over India. There are ^Ye hundred of them in all. 
Some are as crude and primitive as that with which 
Dr. Kugler began. Others are great plants. Training- 
schools are preparing Christian nurses. Several medi- 
cal schools have arisen to train Indian men and women 
to go out as Christian doctors to bring healing to the 
millions of Indians who now suffer without help or hope. 

When a particularly severe epidemic of bubonic 
plague broke out in Ahmednagar, the people of every 
class came to us and said, "If you will send for Dr. 
Beals, we will be inoculated." We missionaries had 
been doing everything in our power for years to show 
the people of Ahmednagar the value of inoculation 
against plague. They had seen our two thousand Chris- 
tians in the city go through epidemic after epidemic 
with scarcely a death, while they themselves were dying 
by the hundreds. Yet we had not been able to over- 
come their prejudice against inoculation. Ten years 
before, Dr. Beals had worked in Ahmednagar for a 
short time. He had had only a poor dispensary off on 
one side of the city, yet somehow he had won the 
confidence of the people in such a way that they came 
to tell us that they were now ready to give up their 
prejudice and be inoculated if only he would come to do 
it. A telegram was sent to Dr. Beals, and he left the 
work at his hospital, one hundred and thirty miles 
away, and came. 

When the people of Ahmednagar heard the news, 
crowds thronged the mission high school compound 
where he was to work. Competent native doctors were 



THOSE POOK MISSIONARIES 145 

there to take care of those who would go to them. 
Dr. Ruth Hume was in another room inoculating the 
women. Dr. Beals spent three very husy days in 
Ahmednagar, on one of them inoculating over a thou- 
sand people. As a result of this campaign, the old 
prejudice of the city against inoculation was hroken. 
IsTow when plague comes, people of all classes are 
eager to he inoculated. In this way every year hun- 
dreds of lives are saved largely hecause of the confidence 
awakened in the people hy a modest American medical 
missionary, in whose service the people sensed some- 
thing of the love of Him who went ahout healing the 
sick. 

Almost every missionary in India has to he more 
or less of an assistant medical missionary. There is 
so much sickness all ahout, some of which needs only 
a little intelligent care, that we simply have to lend 
a hand. There are children whose eyes are infected 
and who are neglected until their eyes are injured 
for life or until they go hlind. All they need is a 
little attention and a simple remedy to save them from 
this calamity. Every morning there used to gather 
on our veranda a group of Indians with various ail- 
ments to he treated hy Mrs. Clark. The worst cases 
she sent to the hospital, hut her own hrief hospital 
training came into daily use as she cared for the 
simpler cases in her little veranda dispensary. Often 
when I went among the villages I took with me an 
Indian medical man, or, if that was not possihle, at 
least a supply of quinine for malaria and potassium 
permanganate to disinfect the village wells in time of 
cholera. Whole villages are exposed to that terrihle 



146 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

disease, and thousands of people die through the use 
of impure water, when the main remedy that is needed 
is a little disinfectant for the village well. I suppose 
that almost every district missionary is the means of 
saving many lives hy his simple efforts to help meet 
diseases and epidemics. 

Everyone knows something ahout that terrible, loath- 
some disease of leprosy, which rots away its victims' 
bodies little by little — a living death. Indians fear this 
disease, yet lepers are allowed to live on in their 
villages and even in their own homes, exposing others 
to the dreaded infection. Probably there are 250,000 
lepers in India. Missionaries, both medical and non- 
medical, try to do what they can to help them. To 
make their lives happier and to protect their relatives 
and friends from the disease, leper asylums have been 
opened in many places, and missionaries try to bring 
whatever they can of brightness and cheer and love 
into these refuges. Here lepers are given the wonder- 
ful new treatment which may turn out to be a real 
cure. They are given gardens of their own to work 
in and opportunities to satisfy other human interests. 
Even more important, they receive what one of these 
missionaries calls the "Christ-treatment; something of 
love and kindness ; someone to care for them and bring 
relief." 

In India missionaries are at work in sixty-one leper 
asylums and homes for the untainted children of lepers. 
Some of you have heard of Mary Reed, the American 
missionary, who, when she was in America on fur- 
lough, found that she had leprosy. Without a word 



THOSE POOK MISSIONARIES 147 

to her friends about it, she went back to India and 
is now in charge of a beautiful leper asylum where 
she is giving her life for her Indian fellow-sufferers. 
It is indeed touching to know how real is the in- 
terest of these lepers in others. Their church comes 
to mean much to them. They give of their scanty 
money to all sorts of Christian causes. I have never 
heard a more beautiful story of real Christian experi- 
ence than that of an Indian leper girl in Sam Higgin- 
bottom's asylum at Naini. I first heard Mr. Higgin- 
bottom tell the story in India, but anyone may now 
read it in his book The Gospel and the Plow. Her 
name was Frances, and she was a refined, educated 
Christian girl. Somehow she became infected; the 
unmistakable sores of leprosy appeared on her fingers, 
and she was sent to the asylum. When she first caught 
sight of the wrecks of women who were there, she 
turned in despair and exclaimed, "My God, am I going 
to become as they are!" But some days later when 
she had become a little more accustomed to her new 
life, Mr. Higginbottom proposed to her that she try 
to use her own education in helping the women and 
children to read and write and sing. Gradually a 
change came over the whole life of the asylum as a 
result of her loving service, and with it a change came 
in herself. One day after she had begun working for 
her fellow-lepers some time, she opened her heart to 
the American woman doctor. She told her that at first 
she had rebelled against her fate, but that gradually 
she had come to see that God had brought her there 
because He needed her to work for the lepers. If she 
had not become a leper, she would never have discovered 



148 INDIA OIT THE MAECH 

her work. She ended her confession with these won- 
derful words: "Every day I live now, I thank Him 
for having sent me here and given me this work to do." 
Sam Higginbottom says: "The disease has worked 
its way in her. But her face is always radiant, a smile 
plays about that pain-wrought face. "No word of com- 
plaint, ever a word of cheer for him that is weary. 
Most of the women of the Asylum are now Christians, 
after having confessed their faith in the God and 
Savior they have learned to know through Frances." 

You have seen how poor the people of India are, 
especially the outcastes. Probably there are sixty mil- 
lion who do not get enough to eat except during the 
harvest time. Is it part of the missionary's job to 
try to help them earn a better living ? The missionary 
answers emphatically, "Yes! Jesus fed the hungry, 
and we would not be true disciples of our Master if 
we did not try to help men and women and little chil- 
dren to get enough to eat and enough to wear." Our 
village schools with their 500,000 pupils help. It is not 
so easy for the money sharks of India, who always 
prey upon the poor, to get into their clutches men 
who can read and figure. Moreover, thousands of boys 
and girls from dark, one-room, poverty-stricken homes 
have gone through the village school into higher educa- 
tion and are now earning fair incomes as doctors, nurses, 
clerks, teachers, or workers in other useful callings. 

Another way in which the missionaries try to help 
is through Cooperative Credit Societies. Have you 
ever heard of a missionary banker? Come to Jalna, 
and I will show you one who has been decorated by 




Dr. Anna S. Kugler working with her clerk at the Guntur 
Hospital which, under h-r leadership, developed in fifteen years 
from a medicine chest to one of the largest and finest mission 
hospitals in South India, with maternity block, chapel, nurses' 
home, and dispensary. 



THOSE POOR MISSIONARIES 149 

the Government for his services. Rev. W. E. Wilkie- 
Brown is another "typical'' missionary, a kindly, vigor- 
ous Scotchman. He found many of the villagers of 
the Jalna district practically the slaves of the money 
lender. They had to have money for seed every rainy 
season, and they had no money to buy it with, so that 
they had to borrow from the money lender, who was 
willing to accommodate them for a little matter of 
sixty or eighty per cent a year. Once in the hands of 
the money lender, the poor man never gets out. He 
toils on, and his wife and children toil on. They keep 
paying of their little earnings on their debt, but it does 
not grow less. A wedding comes, or sickness, and 
more debt and more interest are added. Finally, mil- 
lions of poor people in India give up all hope of ever 
being free from the money lender and lose interest 
in their work. They become careless and shiftless as 
well as hopeless. 

To help such poor people, Mr. Wilkie-Brown, with 
the help of the Government, started a Cooperative 
Credit Society with a bank which lends money to mem- 
bers of the Society at nine per cent interest. Every 
member of the Society is responsible to pay back every 
loan the bank makes to every other member, as well 
as those it makes to him. When they combine in this 
way, even the poor Indians have strength. First they 
borrow enough money to repay what they owe to the 
money lender. Then they receive another loan for 
seed or for a pair of bullocks to cultivate their land or 
to buy an improved steel plow or to dig a well for 
irrigation. With their old debts wiped out and with 
a chance to get on their feet, they go back to their 



150 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

villages new men. They have been hopeless slaves. 
"Now they are free. Life has a new meaning to them. 
There is hope for their children now that they are 
no longer in the clutches of the money lender. 

Mr. Wilkie-Brown will take ns to his desk and let 
us ,see his big books full of neatly kept accounts. He 
will tell us the story that lies back of some of these 
accounts — whole communities made over from shift- 
less, hopeless, weak, day laborers into thrifty, happy 
farmers, with enough to eat to keep their families 
well and enough laid by to pay back their loans. 

"Do they really pay back ?" we ask Mr. Wilkie-Brown. 
^^Yes, they do," he replies. "Sometimes it comes hard, 
especially when the harvests fail, but somehow they 
manage to do it." Then he turns to us with a con- 
tagious smile of enthusiasm and says something like 
this : "The best of it all is the way this thing is making 
over the entire life of the village. The members of 
the society have to be interested in each other now. 
They all make it a business to see that no member is 
lazy or extravagant, and they help out members who 
are sick or in hard luck. Wherever they have societies, 
they are asking for schools. Hundreds of them want 
to become Christians as a result of our cooperative 
credit. It is the most effective way I've ever found 
for preaching the gospel." 

Many other missionaries are helping to put new 
hope into India's people through cooperative credit 
societies. Indeed the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion has established a special Eural Department which 
is spreading the gospel of thrift through cooperative 
credit in many parts of India. 



THOSE POOR MISSIONARIES 151 

Dotted over India there are missionary industrial 
schools where boys and girls are being taught how to 
run an automobile or how to make lace, how to pro- 
duce good furniture or how to grow twice as large 
a crop as the old methods make possible. 

In one of these schools Mr. HoUister of the American 
Methodist Board manufactured steel plows especially 
adapted to Indian needs. He taught many boys to 
make a good living in the manufacture of the plow. 
He also helped raise the level of agriculture wherever 
his plows went. 

Mr. Churchill of the Congregational Board taught 
his boys on his improved loom how to weave Indian 
cloth more than twice as fast as they could on the old 
village loom. 

Mr. Higginbottom of the Presbyterian Board, whose 
interesting little book we have already referred to, is 
teaching his boys how, by the use of better seed and 
by properly preparing the soil, they can raise a crop 
which will be twice as profitable as the old Indian 
methods would produce. 

I am sitting in my school office when a teacher comes 
to me. "It's no use, Sahib," he says. "Nama and 
Ganpat and Maruti and about eight more of those big 
boys simply can't learn English. They are holding 
back the entire class." 

"We will have to do something about it," I reply. 
As soon as possible we secure a jack-of-all-trades, who 
is mostly a mason and carpenter, and who is also a 
good practical teacher — a very rare man in India. 
With a rough shed as a shop, he begins working with 
these big boys. Soon there is a change in the very 



152 IW^DIA ON- THE MARCH 

look of their faces. They have been dull and sullen 
before. They simply are not fitted for higher studies, 
and they do not like regular school life. But they do 
like this work with stone and wood. The class makes 
rapid progress. After a time we send them out, and 
they actually build a schoolhouse from the ground up, 
and they do the job well. Before long they are all out at 
work for good wages, as Indian wages go, and are 
sturdy intelligent members of the community and the 
church. Whenever I meet one of them, he gives me 
a grateful salaam for my part in getting him started 
in life. 'Not all industrial mission work can be so 
simple or so quickly successful as this was. Many mis- 
sion industrial enterprises have failed; but more and 
more of them are succeeding in helping the poorer peo- 
ple of India. 

What is the missionaries' job ? You have seen them 
off on hikes with Indian boys, settling village quarrels, 
saving life in hospital and hut, teaching poverty- 
stricken people how to earn a living. Are the mis- 
sionaries right in calling all of these things missionary 
work? In which kind of work would you most like 
to share? 

Sam Higginbottom goes to the heart of the matter 
when he writes : ^ 

I think again of that great picture drawn for us in the 
twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. The nations 
are separated from one another as a shepherd separates 

1 The Gospel cmd the Plow, Sam Higginbottom, Macmillan Co., 
pp. 136-137. 



THOSE POOR MISSIONARIES 153 

the sheep from the goats. The sheep on his right hand, 
the goats on his left. To those on his right hand He says, 
"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for you from the foundation of the world. . . .^' 
They say unto Him, "Why, Lord, for what do you call us 
blessed ? What have we ever done ?'^ And Jesus says, "Ye 
saw me hungry, and ye gave me to eat.'' They say, "Hold 
on there. Lord, are you not going too fast? making some 
mistake? We never saw you, let alone saw you hungry." 
"Oh, yes, you did," Jesus says. "When you went to that 
little famine-cursed Indian village that had been growing 
ten bushels of wheat per acre and you taught it to grow 
twenty, you were helping to feed the hungry. When you 
went to that village that was growing sixty pounds of poor, 
short-staple cotton per acre and taught them to grow three 
hundred pounds per acre of good, long-staple cotton you 
were helping to clothe the naked. When you went to that 
village where the well had dried up and you sent a boring 
outfit and bored down until you had secured an abundant 
supply of water, enough for man and beast and some over 
for irrigation, you were helping to give drink to the thirsty. 
When the doctor opened his hospital for the poor and lowly 
who otherwise would have no medical aid, he was visiting 
the sick. When you went to India's outcastes, to her ^un- 
touchables' whom man despiseth, who have suffered age- 
long, untellable wrongs in the fearful prison of caste, and 
freed them from its bondage and caused them to walk as 
free men, that was done unto Me." "Lord, we never 
thought of You there or in that degraded state." "Oh, 
yes; take the veil from that little humble Indian village 
outcaste, I am there. Inasmuch as ye did it to the lowest 
and meanest of India's outcastes, ye did it unto Me." 

There is work — glorious, fascinating, adventuresome 
work in India for each one of us. Where is it and 
what is it? 



There are many beautiful things in Hinduism, but the 
fullest light is from Christ . . . Hinduism has been 
digging channels. Christ is the water to flow through 
these channels. — Sadhu 8undar Singh 



VIII 

Christians Who Count 

One of tlie most beautiful sections of India is the 
Malabar Coast country, which lies to the far southwest. 
About fifty miles inland rise the high, wooded moun- 
tains which cut this country off from easy contact with 
the rest of India. Parallel with the coast and pro- 
tected from the sea by a long neck of land are quiet 
backwaters, through which our little steamer slowly 
glides as we come to visit this land of tropical luxuri- 
ance. It is a veritable Garden of Eden, with its 
many little rivers, its great groves of coconut and 
banana palms, and its pepper vines twined among 
the trees. Yet it is not the charm of the country which 
draws us here. It is the unique interest of some of its 
people, for this is the home of one of the oldest and 
most significant groups of Christians in the world. 

In the summer of 1921 Christian Endeavorers came 
from all over America and beyond to 'New York for 
a great convention. A mighty and inspiring throng 
of sixteen thousand assembled there. It was a great 
meeting. But every year about thirty thousand of 
these Malabar Christians gather in a mammoth palm- 
leaf pavilion in a dry river bed for a religious con- 
vention. And bear it in mind that, except as an in- 
vited guest, no missionary has anything to do with this 
convention. The Indians have entire responsibility for 
it. In Everybody's World Dr. Sherwood Eddy gives 
the following vivid description of the 1920 convention 
at which he was the principal guest and speaker: 

155 



156 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

On the platform at our left are seated the white-robed 
priests of this ancient church, and upon raised seats on the 
right are the two bishops in their purple satin robes, with 
golden girdles and quaint headdresses. One is of the old 
school, looking like the ancient ISTestorian patriarch of 
Antioch. . . . The other is a young man, modern, keen, 
alert, whom we knew as a college student a dozen years 
ago^ when he decided, one night, to give up his future 
ambition in the law and to enter Christian work. After 
completing his education in Canada, he returned to spend 
his life in vitalizing this ancient church in which he was 
born. In front of the platform in this great pavilion the 
Christians are seated. They have been gathering from 
hundreds of distant villages, coming up like the tribes of 
old to the Feast of Tabernacles at Jerusalem. All are clad 
in flowing white garments and are seated on the dry sand 
of the river bed, the men on the right, the women on the 
left. As the people unite in intercession, you can hear a 
distant murmur rising gradually like the sound of the sea. 
A wave of prayer seems to sweep over the vast audience. 
The Bishop leads in a last prayer, and we begin the morn- 
ing^s address. . . . They are turning back to the primitive 
and simple Christianity of the early days, with an open 
Bible, fervent prayer, and simple witnessing to the glad 
news of abundant life. Here is an ancient Indian church, 
using its own forms of worship and expressing Eastern 
methods of devotion. 

Let me tell you a little of the romantic story of 
these Malabar Christians. They call themselves Mar 
Thoma Christians, "the Saint Thomas Christians," be- 
cause they believe that the Apostle Thomas himself 
founded their church. It is certain that long before 
Augustine and his little band of missionaries came to 
England in 597 A.D., Christian missionaries from 
Palestine had sailed across the Indian Ocean with their 
message of hope and joy and had founded a church. 



CHKISTIANS WHO COUNT 157 

Alfred the Great heard about these St. Thomas 
Christians. In 883 A.D. he sent an embassy all the 
way from England to India "bearing the alms which 
the King had vowed to send — to India, to St. Thomas, 
and to St. Bartholomew." The embassy "penetrated 
with great success to India and brought thence many 
foreign gems and aromatic liquors." So you can read 
in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. At the time when 
Alfred the Great sent his embassy, the Mar Thoma 
Christians were in great favor with the Rajah of 
the land. They had been given the standing of a 
high caste in the community and had settled down 
to a self-contained life much like that of the Hindu 
castes. Their worship was in the language of Syria, 
which few of them understood. Hence it had become 
a dead form. Under these circumstances, it was not 
strange that they sank into a sort of sleep for several 
centuries, until they were violently aroused by the 
coming of the Portuguese to Calicut in 1498. 

Imagine the surprise and delight of the Portuguese 
when they discovered among the strange brown people 
of India a large body of Christians ! And imagine 
the delight of the Indian Church in having powerful 
fellow-Christians from across the seas to encourage and 
help them! But the joy on both sides was short lived. 
The Mar Thoma Christians followed the ritual of the 
Eastern Church and owned allegiance to an Eastern 
Patriarch. This made them heretics to the bigoted 
Portuguese who thought that the only true faith was 
that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Portuguese 
at once set about to convert them to Rome, but these 
Indian Christians were obstinate enough to hold to 



158 INDIA OK THE MARCH 

their own ways. Then the Portuguese, through a clever 
archbishop, undertook to compel them to obey. This 
archbishop had power and used it relentlessly. Three 
bishops of the Indian Church were tortured to death 
through the Inquisition, and the simple Malabar Chris- 
tians were brought to outward submission which lasted 
for fifty years. But when one more of their bishops 
was arrested, their smouldering resentment broke into 
open revolt. 

Great crowds of them gathered at the sacred Croonen 
Cross and there swore never more to have anything to 
do with Rome. All could not touch the Cross as they 
swore this oath. Therefore long ropes were attached 
to it; and they held these ropes as they together took 
the solemn vow which, as they well knew, might bring 
upon them fierce persecution by the Portuguese. It 
was a Declaration of Independence which took fully 
as much courage as that of the American colonies. I^ot 
all the Mar Thoma Christians joined in this declara- 
tion; indeed, about two thirds of them still recognize 
the Pope. But there are now about 300,000 members 
in the churches which broke from the Poman yoke at 
the Croonen Cross. 

They did not become a strong Church at once. In- 
deed they clung to their old ways until a few decades 
ago. Then under the influence of a Church of England 
mission that had come among them at the invitation of 
their Metran, or bishop, a reform movement started. 
Whole congregations decided that they wanted to wor- 
ship and read the Bible in their own language. "New 
life came into the Church. Those who held to the old 
ways objected. Again there were persecutions. A bit- 



CHRISTIANS WHO COUNT 159 

ter conservative killed a liberal preacher. A court de- 
cision took all their church property away from the 
reformers. That was a hard blow, but they immedi- 
ately set to work to build new churches. Then they 
established some fine schools in which to train their 
leaders. After a time, through the example of the 
English missionaries, they began to feel that they 
could not be a truly Christian church unless they in- 
terested themselves in the outcaste people who lived 
all about them; so they started a home missionary 
society which grew until it now has over fifty home 
missionaries. They also saw that they owed a debt 
to India as a whole. Consequently they started a for- 
eign mission far away in another part of India, where 
their representatives are struggling with a strange lan- 
guage, eating strange food, and living among people 
of strange customs. 

The reforming Mar Thoma Church has only about 
80,000 members, and most of them are not rich. But 
their religious faith has come to mean so much to them 
that they are ready to sacrifice in order to give it to 
others. The women give a little out of every day's 
food supply for their missionary society. When a 
daughter is married, the Church receives a tenth of 
her dowry. These Indian Christians have invented all 
sorts of devices to stimulate giving and are probably 
far more generous in their support of their churches 
and missions than we Americans are in our benevolence. 
When I was their guest, one of them pointed out 
to me the place in the mountains near which a Mar 
Thoma Christian had worked. It was Kev. W. K. 
Kuruvilla, vv^ho left his friends and went up to live 



160 IITDIA ON" THE MARCH 

among tlie wild tribe of primitive people called Arayans, 
whose villages lie in this region. These people lived 
a life so low as to be little above the animal. They 
knew nothing of cleanliness or of education till he came. 
But he went into their homes, and with his own hands 
showed them how to cook. In every way he shared 
their life and helped them until thousands became 
Christian, and their whole level of life was raised. 
To me, he is a prophecy of what these able, intelligent 
Mar Thoma Christians, with their ancient picturesque 
Christianity and their new spirit, may do for India. 
They bring to their countrymen no new fangled for- 
eign religion, but one which has been tried and tested 
for many centuries. It has carried them through bitter 
persecution, and today it means more to them than 
ever before. I shall never forget the look of high 
determination on the fine face of young Bishop Abra- 
ham when he said to me, ^^Our church has a mission 
to all of India, and we must carry it out." 

But the Mar Thoma Church furnishes only a small 
part of India's '^ve million Christians. Many others 
are actively at work bringing Christ into India's new 
life. The Church of England has a membership of 
almost 300,000 in India. From one of its ^^mass 
movement areas" have come hundreds of Christian 
workers, among them the Bishop of Dornakal, the first 
Indian Bishop and an outstanding leader. 

The "South India United Church" is a union of 
Congregational, Presbyterian, and Lutheran churches 
of several missions. Each had to sacrifice something 
of its own in order that they could all agree to unite. 



CHRISTIANS WHO COUNT 161 

The result is a great churcli, great in numbers, with 
about 200,000 members, and great in spirit. Their 
coming together gave all its members new heart. They 
said, ^']^ow that we are united we must together start 
a great evangelistic campaign." And they did. They 
took as their motto "Each one teach one and each one 
reach one." Of course not everyone carried out the 
motto, but many, including ignorant village Chris- 
tians, did go out and did win others. In some places 
they started new mass movements. In one mission 
they added a third to their church membership in ten 
months. Sherwood Eddy tells of one village congrega- 
tion which through its own efforts added to its mem- 
bership in a single Sunday one hundred and twenty- 
three men and women from fourteen different castes. 

Indian Christians of many denominations are con- 
ducting the large and successful !N'ational Missionary 
Society which maintains. six missions in different parts 
of India. 

One of the reasons for the new enthusiasm of the 
Indian Church is the rapid development of beautiful 
Indian hymns. Indians love music. The men sing as 
they drive their bullock carts, and the women sing as 
they grind the grain. You might not think there was 
much music in the strange quavers of their singing, but 
it grips them as our music never does. It is now be- 
coming not an uncommon sight to see Indian Christians, 
who have been working all day out in the fields, gather 
in the evening at their rest-house with their queer 
drums and cymbals as accompaniment and sing hymns 
for hours together. The Christians of India are be- 
ginning to go to their great gatherings as the Hindus 



162 INDIA ON" THE MAECH 

go on pilgrimage. They sing as they pass through the 
villages on the road and thus carry far and wide the 
Christian message. I saw one group who in this way 
tramped with their flags over their shoulders one hun- 
dred and fifty miles, much of it through strange coun- 
try, in order to attend a big celebration. All over India 
we are beginning to have an Indian Church which ex- 
presses its Christianity in warm, rich Oriental ways. 

India has produced many wonderful Christian lead- 
ers. ISTone are more wonderful than Pandita Kamabai, 
the remarkable Brahman widow, who became the great- 
est friend of Indian fallen women and won hundreds 
of them to a better life in her great Christian institu- 
tion. There have been men in the Christian Church 
who have taken high positions in the life of the country 
— ^men like the fine Indian Rajah, Sir Harnam Singh, 
and the great political leader, Kali Charan Bannerjea. 
I have selected three typical Christian leaders of India 
to whom I want especially to introduce you. 

The first is my former neighbor and friend, the late 
Narayan Vaman Tilak. Tilak was a Brahman of bril- 
liant ability. One could guess his genius from his 
remarkable, long, dome-like head. He seemed almost 
Western in his quick, impetuous movements. And in- 
deed he was frank to say that he thought India must 
learn much from the West. Yet one outstanding fact 
about him was his love for his country. As a boy it 
surged up in him as a great impulse, and in later life 
he wrote, "I don't think I have loved my own parents, 
wife, children, friends, even myself, as much as I love 
my country." 



CHEISTIAITS WHO COUISTT 163 

He was a boy in his later teens when a friend's 
sister lost her husband. She was only a young girl 
and had scarcely seen this husband, for they had been 
married as small children and had never lived together ; 
yet by Indian custom, this girl was to be condemned 
for the rest of her days to the dreary life of an Indian 
widow. Tilak saw clearly that the custom of child- 
marriage and the dooming of innocent girl widows to 
a life-long agony was a great wrong. It was one of 
the customs that had to be abolished if his country 
was to become great. So he quietly offered to marry 
this girl widow. Thus would he strike a blow for 
the good of his country. Well he knew that he would 
be bitterly persecuted and thrown out of his home if 
he did such a thing, but he had an eager boldness in 
reform that almost welcomed suffering. In this case, 
the girl herself refused to consider such a break from 
custom; but in his offer, young Tilak had shown his 
character. 

He early saw that the caste system must be reformed 
and that the reformation must begin with religion since 
caste and other evils were rooted in Hinduism. Because 
Hinduism did not seem to Tilak to furnish a possible 
basis for national union, he set out to found a new 
religion which might save India. In this religion the 
brotherhood of man was to have a place beside the 
Fatherhood of God. As he was working out this plan, 
he chanced to meet a European on a railroad journey. 
They talked of religion, and this unknown man finally 
said to Tilak something like this : "The religion which 
you want for India is the very one which Jesus taught 
nineteen hundred years ago. Here is a 'New Testa- 



164 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

ment. Will you read it ?" Tilak laughingly promised 
to do so, thinking little of the matter. But when he 
began to read, he became deeply interested. Later he 
told what the result was when he came to the Sermon 
on the Mount. We are so used to Christ's teaching 
that for us it often loses its beauty and becomes almost 
commonplace. To Tilak it came with the freshness of 
a great revelation. He said : "I could not tear myself 
away from those sentences, so full of charm and beauty, 
which express the love and tenderness and truth which 
the sermon conveys. In those three chapters I found 
answers to the most abstruse problems of Hindu philos- 
ophy. It amazed me to see how here the most pro- 
found problems were completely solved. I went on 
eagerly reading to the last page of the Bible that I 
might learn more of Christ." It was not long before 
Christ had completely won him. 

Tilak had already earned a reputation as a great 
speaker and a writer of beautiful prose and verse. 
He began to express his Christian faith in his writings. 
Although he used an assumed name, his friends recog- 
nized his style, and persecution began. He lost his 
position and was reduced to want, but his answer to 
all this was to take the final step of baptism. This 
brought even fiercer persecution. His wife took their 
baby boy and left him. His life was threatened. He 
was a man of very great affection and was terribly 
lonely far from his friends and without his family; 
yet his very loneliness drove him to love Christ more 
and to find his joy more completely in Christ's fellow- 
ship. 

He began to write Marathi hymns, so beautiful in 




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CHEISTIANS WHO COUNT 165 

their language that educated Brahmans were eager to 
read them, and so full of the spirit of devotion that 
they brought inspiration even to the uneducated vil- 
lagers. Tilak had the wonderful art of taking popular 
Indian tunes and of writing for them hymns that 
sang themselves right into the heart of the people. 
One day he saw a little group of my Training School 
hoys sitting under a tree and singing a popular song 
whose words were filthy, as the words of too many of 
India's popular songs are. Tilak's heart grew hot 
within him. These hoys were being trained to bring 
the pure spirit of Christ into Indian life, yet here they 
were poisoning their thoughts with such a song! He 
rushed to his house and under the pressure of strong 
feeling wrote off to that same tune a Christian hymn. 
Then he hurried back, found the boys still sitting under 
the tree and taught them the new hymn. The boys 
took it up with enthusiasm. It was so attractive that 
soon it was being sung all over Western India. It is 
today one of the most inspiring hymns in the Marathi 
language. Some years afterwards Tilak asked a Brah- 
man friend if he remembered the original words to 
that tune. The Brahman thought a moment and an- 
swered, ^^The only words I know are those of your 
beautiful hymn." 

After a time Mrs. Tilak consented to come to Ahmed- 
nagar to join her husband on condition that she might 
*'keep caste" and should not be compelled to give up 
her Hindu faith. She was surprised and disarmed by 
the friendliness of the Christians about her. She says 
that what first made her think seriously of Christianity 
was the way the Christian boys played with her boy. 



166 I]S^DIA ON THE MAECH 

They were not always quarreling and abusing each 
other, but played happily together. She said to her- 
self, "Here is a religion that makes even the boys play 
more happily. I would like to have my boy grow 
up in such a religion." And so, gradually, she herself 
yielded to Christian influence and became a true Chris- 
tian. 

I cannot begin to tell you of all Mr. Tilak's services 
to India. He wanted to see a truly Indian Christianity 
and so helped to establish church festivals similar to 
those the people knew and loved. The reason our Chris- 
tians are ready to sing hymns for hours together and to 
walk many miles to attend Christian meetings is because 
they have Tilak's wonderful marching songs and hymns 
to sing on the way. His home was ever open to high- 
caste inquirers, and a goodly number of them became 
Christians after living with him. He edited a Chris- 
tian newspaper. He inspired class after class of men 
who were going out to become Christian leaders. He 
taught Indian patriots that Christianity was not a 
"foreign religion, but a God-given way to save India." 

ITon-Christian leaders wanted him to become editor 
of a great patriotic paper. There was only one con- 
dition — Christianity must not be mentioned. He was 
greatly attracted by this opportunity, but said: "I^o, 
I cannot do it. I must be free to write about the re- 
ligion which seems to me the hope of our Motherland." 

Tilak raised the Christian Church of India to a 
higher level and gave it a warmer life and a richer 
message. His greatest service was through his beauti- 
ful hymns. "No translation of his poetry does it justice. 
It is the response of the heart of India to her Christ. 



CHRISTIANS WHO COUNT 167 

The next man to whom I want to introduce you is 
also a neighbor and friend of mine, but different in 
almost every way from Tilak, the high-born patriot 
and poet. His name is Eambhau and he is a neighbor 
because his village of Khandala ^ is only eight miles 
from Ahmednagar. He often dropped in to see me, 
and I frequently went out to see him. Rambhau was 
nothing but a simple village Christian, rugged of body, 
but with a serious impediment in his speech and know- 
ing little beyond his neighborhood. His modest little 
home was right in the middle of the maliarwada, or 
outcaste quarter. It was in such degrading surround- 
ings that he had grown up. As a boy, he had attended 
the village school; occasionally a native pastor or a 
missionary had. held a religious service among his 
people; beyond this, few of the higher influences had 
touched his life. Yet, somehow, this sturdy villager 
was not like the people around him. 

Perhaps it was partly because a great sorrow had 
come into his life. Although he and his wife were a 
little more comfortably off than most in the outcaste 
quarter and could have given children a better chance, 
no children had come to bless their home and carry 
on their name. They were heart-broken, but they 
talked it over and decided that they would adopt a 
child. Their choice was strange and novel; they took 
as their adopted child nothing less than the Khandala 
Church. It was a very unattractive little church, with 
no enthusiasm and no warmth of life. In fact it was 
almost dead. Yet in his steady, common-sense way 
Rambhau started to nurse it to life again. First, he 

1 Kliun-da-la. 



168 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

set about to see that tlie little Christian school should 
be made a success. The teacher was rather careless 
and lazy, and the school had run down so far that 
we were talking of closing it. Rambhau encouraged 
the teacher by bringing in pupils. He also, in a kindly 
way, kept him up to the mark. There was a demand 
for a night school, but they had no clock and no lamp. 
A day school could go by the sun, but a night school 
needed a clock. Rambhau, out of his limited funds, 
secured both lamp and clock and got the night school 
under way. The teacher became ill, and it was this 
simple villager who nursed him and saw that his fam- 
ily was kept from all want during his sickness. 

l^ext, he started what was for him a large project — 
nothing less than to get for his village a worthy build- 
ing which they could use for a church. He induced 
all the Christians of Khandala to give a few days' 
work in the off season. Eambhau himself gave all his 
time and whatever money was needed for the work 
until the foundations were all laid and the mud walls 
built. Then he came to me and said: "Sahib, we 
need a church building in Khandala. We have built 
the walls, but we haven't money enough to build the 
roof. Can you help us?" I helped him to secure 
a small sum, and he went off triumphant. By shrewd 
buying and careful work, he put a thoroughly good 
roof on the little "church," as he lovingly called the 
Indian structure. 

To the dedication he invited people from all the 
region, and when they knew that he was planning to 
give them a simple feast, you may be sure that they 
hastened to accept. Bands of Christians came from far 



CHRISTIANS WHO COUJS'T 169 

and near. As each band approached, some of the Khan- 
dala Christians went out to meet it, singing and sway- 
ing their bodies in time with the music. Then, all 
together, they came back, singing as they came. Of 
course there were speeches. Altogether it was a mem- 
orable and inspiring occasion in the little village and 
in all the region. In fact it resulted in the opening of 
Christian work in two other villages. 

By this time Rambhau's child was very much alive, 
but the dedication had shown him one great blemish. 
The Khandala Church had no singing-band with instru- 
ments, such as some of the other village churches had. 
So Rambhau went to work. First, he collected a very 
respectable sum from the poor Khandala Christians. 
Then he trudged in to see me to talk the matter over. 
Gladly I made up the little amount he still needed, 
and he went back to Khandala with a set of native 
instruments. He himself could not sing, but soon 
he invited me to an evening service, when I was filled 
with wonder. Those unlettered villagers, in a few 
weeks, had learned perhaps thirty of Mr. Tilak's in- 
spiring hymns. After a hard day of work in the fields, 
they came to the little church and sang and sang and 
sang for hours until I myself had to go home. 

But Rambhau's child was by no means grown up 
yet. It needed constant care, as every healthy young- 
ster does. One day when I was in Khandala, I was 
surprised to see a man in the most advanced stage of 
leprosy huddled in a corner of the church. 

"Who is that V I asked. 

Rambhau replied, "That is Bapu, a Christian of 
Khandala. He has been in a leper asylum, but be- 



170 INDIA ON THE MARCH 

came lonesome for his village and so has crawled here 
and is living in the church." 

^^But he ought not to live there," I said, and Rambhau 
agreed with me. 

Some weeks later he came to see me. "Sahib, do 
you remember Bapu, the leper?" 

"Yes," I said. "Where is he now?" 

"He is living in a hut I built for him. I take him 
his meals every day. My wife threatens to leave me 
because I am going to a leper, and she is afraid that 
I will bring the disease home, but what can I do ? Some- 
body must take care of Bapu." 

"You are doing just the right thing, Rambhau," I 
said. 

"But," he continued, "now Bapu wants to go back 
to the leper asylum where he can have regular care, 
and I don't know what to do about it." 

"I'll pay his fare," I said, "but it would be hard 
for me to leave my work to take him." 

Rambhau was silent for some time, then he looked 
up and said quietly, "I'll take him," and he did. 

I ordered a special railroad compartment, for of 
course Bapu could not be allowed to travel with others 
in a regular car. He was almost helpless now, and with 
all his loathsome disease, Rambhau had to lift him into 
the cart that brought him from Khandala to Ahmed- 
nagar and into the compartment in which those two 
were to travel for hours together. As I waved them off 
at the station, I was awed at the quiet Christian hero- 
ism of this uneducated villager. Any man, however 
brave, might well shrink from such a journey with such 
a companion, but Rambhau carried it through. People 



CHEISTIAE^S WHO COUKT 171 

refused them water. 'No cartman could at first be in- 
duced to take thein from the train to the asylum, but 
by patience and persistence he succeeded in getting 
this poor leper to the shelter where he might end his 
days in whatever of comfort was possible. 

Again some weeks later Rambhau came to Ahmed- 
nagar. "I am off to see Bapu/' he said. "Before I 
left him at the asylum, he made me promise to come 
back to visit him." 

He saw the surprise in my face, and his own lighted 
up when he added, "You see, I cannot desert him. He 
is my Christian brother." 

And so this son of an Indian outcaste quietly set 
out on a long and expensive journey to visit Bapu, the 
repulsive leper, because he was his Christian brother! 
And I, for one, am sure that, when the King shall 
come in his glory and all the angels with him, among 
the first to whom he will say, "Come, thou blessed of 
my father," will be Eambhau, the village Christian of 
Khandala who adopted the Church as his child. 

Of all the people of India, the Sikh of the Punjab 
is the most striking in appearance. Tall, straight, light- 
complexioned, with his carefully trained black beard 
and his high turban, the typical Sikh is every inch a 
soldier and a gentleman. The Sikh sect grew out 
of a religious reform, but persecution soon welded its 
members into a powerful fighting machine. For many 
generations, by instinct and tradition, they have been 
fighters. Sundar Singh,^ the next Indian Christian 
friend whom we are to meet, was born in a Sikh home 

2 Soonder Singh. 



172 INDIA Olf THE MAEOH 

of wealtli. Many of his relatives were soldiers. 
"Singh" is a common Sikh name meaning "Lion." 
Sundar Singh has carried into his Christian life the 
fearlessness of a lion, but none of his fierceness. 

Erom his mother, Sundar inherited the deepest re- 
ligious instincts and longings of India. She was his 
earliest teacher and led him to regard the life of the 
sadhu, or saint, as his highest ambition. He playfully 
says of himself, "I was not a Sikh (pronounced seek), 
but a seeker-after-truth." When he was only fourteen 
years old, he suffered an overwhelming loss in the death 
of his mother. This drove him to be even more eager 
in his search for truth. He learned by heart the 
Bhagavad Gita/ the most beautiful Hindu religious 
book. He read the Sikh Granth * and the Mohamme- 
dan Koran, but in none of them did he find the peace he 
sought, and no Indian religious leaders could seem to 
help him. 

As a little boy he had come to know something about 
the Bible because he had gone to the Christian school 
in his home village; but he had turned against Chris- 
tianity as a religion which was contrary to the religion 
of his fathers and had refused to remain in the Chris- 
tian school. Of his attitude when he was sixteen years 
old he says : "When I was out in any town I got people 
to throw stones at Christian preachers. ... In the 
presence of my father I cut up the Bible and other 
Christian books and put kerosene oil upon them and 
burnt them. I thought this was a false religion and 
tried all I could to destroy it. I was faithful to mj 
3 Bhag-ga-vad Gee-ta. ^Gruntli. 



CHRISTIANS WHO COUNT 173 

own religion, but I could not get any satisfaction or 
peace." ® 

But the message of tlie Bible and of the Christian 
preachers had made a deeper impression on him than 
he knew. One day in the very midst of his hatred, 
Christ called him as he had called Paul. This is his 
story of what happened : 

I woke up about three o'clock in the morning, had my 
usual bath, and prayed, "0 God, if there is a God, wilt 
thou show me the right way, or I will kill myself.'^ My 
intention was that, if I got no satisfaction, I would place 
my head upon the railway line when the five o'clock train 
passed by and kill myself. If I got no satisfaction in this 
life, I thought I would get it in the next. I was praying and 
praying, but got no answer ; and I prayed for half an hour 
longer, hoping to get peace. At 4:30 a. m. I saw some- 
thing of which I had no idea at all previously. In the 
room where I was prajdng, I saw a great light. I thought 
the place was on fire. I looked round, but could find 
nothing. Then the thought came to me that this might be 
an answer that God had sent me. Then as I prayed and 
looked into the light, I saw the form of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. It had such an appearance of glory and love. If 
it had been some Hindu incarnation I would have pros- 
trated myself before it. But it was the Lord Jesus Christ 
whom I had been insulting a few days before. I felt that 
a vision like this could not come out of my own imagina- 
tion. I heard a voice saying in Hindustani, "How long 
will you persecute me ? I have come to save you ; you were 
praying to know the right way. Why do you not take it ?'' 
So I fell at His feet and got this wonderful Peace which I 
could not get anywhere else. This is the joy I was wishing 
to get. . . . When I got up, the vision had all disappeared ; 

5 For this and the following quotations, see Streeter, The Mes- 
sage of 8adhu Sundar Singh, pp. 6-10. 



174 INDIA ON" THE MARCH 

but although the vision disappeared, the Peace and Joy- 
have remained with me ever since. I went off and told 
my father that I had become a Christian. He told me, 
"Go and lie down and sleep; why, only the day before 
yesterday you burnt the Bible ; and you say you are a Chris- 
tian now!'^ I said, "Well, I have discovered now that 
Jesus Christ is alive and have determined to be His fol- 
lower. Today I am His disciple, and I am going to serve 
Him.'' 

Sundar's family used every influence in their power 
to turn the boy from Christianity. They offered him 
wealth. They appealed to him not to disgrace the fam- 
ily name. They threatened him. They persecuted 
him. Finally, when all their efforts had failed, they 
disowned him and ordered him to leave home. Some 
of them even gave him poisoned food for the journey. 
He was only a boy and the first night after he was 
sent away from home he spent alone, shivering under 
a tree. In telling about this night he says: "I began 
to think: ^Yesterday and before that I used to live 
in the midst of luxury at my home; but now I am 
shivering here, and hungry and thirsty and without 
shelter, with no warm clothes and no food.' I had to 
spend the whole night under the tree. But I remember 
the wonderful joy and peace in my heart, the presence 
of my Savior. I held my 'New Testament in my hand. 
I remember that night as my first night in heaven." 

Sundar was soon baptised and, boy though he was, 
he set out on his life as a Christian sadhu. This meant 
that he donned a saffron robe like that worn by the 
Hindu holy men and went about among the villages 



CHEISTIANS WHO COUNT 175 

of India preaching and teaching. He took no money 
and no possessions save his Bible. When people re- 
ceived him, he accepted their hospitality. Where they 
rejected him, he went hungry away, to sleep under 
some tree. At first he worked mainly in the villages 
of the Punjab, but after a time he felt called to do 
vvrhat he could to reach the hermit nation of Tibet. 
Tibet had practically no Christian missionaries. It 
was protected in part by its mighty mountain ramparts, 
but more by the fanaticism of its people. Sundar 
thought that an Indian sadhu might find entrance where 
a white-faced missionary could not, and in this he was 
right. 

Once when he was working in a particularly bigoted 
village, he went at night into a cave in the near-by 
forest. In the morning he awoke to find a leopard 
sleeping near him. At another time, the head Lama 
of a Tibetan town seized him and threw him into a 
well full of the bones and decaying flesh of other vic- 
tims. Here Sundar expected to die. After he had 
been there for days, he heard something grating over- 
head, and the cover of the well was lifted. A rope was 
let down and he was pulled out of the well ; but before 
he could look around, his deliverer had disappeared. 
This wonderful rescue, Sundar Singh himself believes 
to have been wrought by no other than the Master in 
person. 

However this may be, it is certain that the beautiful 
spirit in which Sundar Singh takes persecution is no 
small part of his power. An educated gentleman of 
the Forest Department who belonged to the Arya 
Samaj, which is bitterly hostile to Christianity, tells 



176 INDIA ON THE MAECH 

of seeing Sundar come to a mountain village and be- 
gin preacliing the love of Christ. Some of the hearers 
became angry, and one rose and dealt the Sadhu a 
blow which knocked him from his seat and cut his 
head and hand badly. Sundar rose, bound up his hand, 
and with the blood running down his face, asked God's 
blessing on his persecutors. This act of his, not only 
won the man who dealt the blow, but also the gentle- 
man who described the scene. ^ It is one of the crown- 
ing joys of Sundar Singh's life that his old father has 
at last become a Christian. 

Soon the fame of this young Christian saint went 
out over the land, and he received invitations from 
far and near. He traveled all over India. Great crowds 
of people thronged to hear him wherever he went. 
Christians, young and old, drank in his words with 
such eagerness as they had never before shown. 

And probably no one has done so much to win non- 
Christians to Christ as Sundar Singh. They see in 
him a true Indian holy man, yet they realize that in 
him there is something higher, something better than 
they ever saw in the Hindu devotees. There is a new 
note of victory and of joy in his message. There is 
a sweetness and love in the way he gives himself to 
his service which are unique and well-nigh irresistible. 
In a word, he is a true follower of Christ. Hindus and 
Christians alike see that God's Spirit is in him. 

As his fame grew, Sundar Singh was invited to go 
to China and Japan. These lands have ever looked 
to India for religious inspiration, and they turned 
eagerly to this simple-hearted disciple. Here also great 

« Zahir, A Lover of the Cross, p. 14. 



CHRISTIANS WHO COUNT 1"' 



throngs came to Mm and gained inspiration, even as 
they had done in India. , c.. t. 

In the spring of 1921 the call came to Sundar Singh 
to bring his message to England and to America, and 
he accepted. It was a wonderful experience for our 
practical, workaday. Western Christians to meet such 
a man In his turban and his saffron robe, his leet 
clad in Indian sandals, with his spare, erect figure, and 
his face filled with divine light, he almost seems to 
be an incarnation of the Master Himself. Indeed few 
men in all Christian history have so literally followed 
in the footsteps of our Master as Sundar_ Singh has 
done. I saw him at Silver Bay with American college 
students standing about eagerly asking him questions 
which he was answering out of the richness of his Chris- 
tian experience. It reminded me of the time, shortly 
before, when I had seen him in Madura surrounded by 
a similar group of Indian students. Those who meet 
him recognize that this Indian Christian has a message 
of ioy and inspiration not only for India and not only 
for China and Japan, but also for England and America. 

In Sundar Singh the spirit of India_ speaks-the 
spirit of India transfigured by the spirit of Christ. 
This spirit says : "We too have our gifts to bring to 
the feet of our common Master. Send us your Chris- 
tian missionaries to work with us m breakmg the 
shackles of our past. We also will work with you m 
breaking your shackles. You and we together,— the 
great West and the great East,-shall unite m the 
world-wide fellowship of Christ." 



A Brief Reading List 

Conditions in India have changed so rapidly in recent years 
that the following list has been limited for the most part to books 
that, have appeared within the last decade. The prices quoted 
are subject to change. If one were limited to six supplementary 
books on India, the six that are starred (*) might well be 
chosen, considering both cost and range. Readers should obtain 
from their mission boards all denominational literature on India 
available. 

History and Politics 

*India Old and Neio. Sie Valet^tine Chikol. 1921. Macmillan 

Co., New York. $4.00. 
India's Nation Builders. D. N. Bannekjea. 1920. Brentano's, 

New York. $3.50. 
Oxford History of India. Vincent A. Smith. 1919. Oxford 

University Press, New York. $6.25. 

Social and Economic 

India's Silent Revolution. Fred B. Fisher and Gertrude M. 

Williams. 1919. Macmillan Co., New York. $1.50. 
Peoples and ProUems of India. Sir Thomas W. Holdeeness. 

1912. Henry Holt & Co., New York. 50 cents. 
Social Ideals in India. William Paton. 1919. United Council 

for Missionary Education, London. Is. 3d. 

Education 

Character Building in Kashmir. C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe. 1920. 

Church Missionary Society, London. 3s. 
*Schools icith a Message in India. Daniel Johnson Fleming. 

1921. Oxford University Press, New York. $2.40. 

Indian Religions and Christianity 

*India and Its Faiths: A Traveler's Record. James Bissett 
Pratt. 1915. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. $4.00. 

Modern Religious Movements in India. J. N. Farquhar. 1915. 
Macmillan Co., New York. $2.50. 

Primer of Hinduism. J. N. Farquhar. 1912. Oxford University 
Press, New York. 85 cents. 

178 



A BBIEF READING 3LIST 1T9 

Christianity in India 

Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier. T. L. Penneix. 
1909 J B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia. $3.50. 

*Building with India. Daniel Johnson Fleming. 1922. Mis- 
sionary Education Movement, New York. 75 cents. 

Goal of India, The. W. E. S. Holland. 1918. United Council 
for Missionary Education, London. 5s. 

Gospel and the Plow, The. Sam Higginbottom. 1921. Mac- 
millan Co., New York. $1.25. , 

History of Missions in India. Julius Richter. 1908. Fleming 
H. Eevell Co., New York. $2.50. 

India in Gonfiict. P. N. F. Young and Agnes Feeres. 1920. 
Macmillan Co., New York. $1.40. 

Kashmir in Sunlight and Shade. C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe. Seeley 
Service, London. 1922. 12s. 6d. 

''Lighted to Lighten," The Hope of India. Alice B. VanDoren. 
1922. Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign 
Missions, West Medford, Mass. 75 cents. 

* Message of Sadhu Sundar Singh. B. H. Streeter and A. J. 
Apassamy. 1921. Macmillan Co., New York. $1.75. 

*Outcastes' Hope, The: or Work Among the Depressed Glasses m 

India. G. E. Phillips. 1912. United Council for Missionary 

Education. London. 2s. . _ _ ., 

Pandita Ramahai. Helen S. Dyer. 1911. Fleming H. Eevell 

Co., New York. $1.25. ^ ^^ 

Prince of the Ghurch in India, A. J. C. R. Ewing, 1918. Flem- 
ing H. Revell Co., New York. $1.00. 
Renaissance in India: Its Missionary Aspect. C. F. Andrews. 
1912. United Council for Missionary Education, London. 
Is. lOd. . „ ^ „ _ 

Twice-horn Men. Harold Begbie. 1910. Fleming H. Revell Co., 
New York. $1.25. 

Stories about India 

Wyes of Asia, The. Rudyard Kipling. 1918. Doubleday, Page 
& Co., Garden City, New York. $1.00. 

Folloiving the Equator. Mark Twain. Harper & Brothers, New 
York. 

India, Beloved of Heaven. Brenton Thoburn Badley in collabo- 
ration with Oscar MacMillan Buck and James Jay Kmgham, 
with an introduction by Bishop W. F. Oldham. The Abing- 
don Press, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York. $1.00. 

Kim. Rudyard Kipling.. 1918. Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden 
City, New York. $1.50. 



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